


Thawing

by Paint_Stained_Heart



Series: Thawing [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Addiction, Almost(?) Shrunkyclunks, And Bucky's sorry ass gets dropped on the doorstep, Blowjobs, Body Image, Brief mention of sexual misconduct, Drug Addiction, M/M, Narcotics, Needles, Opiate crisis, Recovery, Relapse, Sign Language, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers owns a halfway house in Detroit, War veterans, modern!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-22 07:31:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_Stained_Heart/pseuds/Paint_Stained_Heart
Summary: Heroin. It's a helluva drug.





	1. Chapter 1

He wakes with a start, which isn’t exactly unusual for him these days. Bloodshot eyes snap open, stomach doing backflips and heart racing as he re-lives it for the three-hundred-and-ninety-sixth consecutive day (not that anyone’s counting. Or that he could even keep track if he wanted to). It feels as though his chest is both heaving and entirely constrained, like someone’s cruelly putting all their weight on him. Even through the self-induced haze, he can feel the panic pulling his esophagus shut, the sensation of falling yanking him down, down. Arms ( _arm_ , he corrects internally) flails for something – anything – to grab onto but can’t find purchase.  
  
Falling. He’s _falling_.

“Bucky?” comes an unrecognizable voice from somewhere nearby.

He thrashes once more on the sheets (sheets? He doesn’t remember passing out in a bed) before gulping for a gasp of air like the drowning man he is. He’s confused, finding himself in a small bedroom, laying on his back in a twin bed with soft, over-washed puce sheets and a window that won’t reveal what time of day it is. On the other side of the room is the origin of the voice, a tall blonde who looks like he hits the gym too much. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers that the man is handsome. Kind-looking. But he can’t trust his own eyes – he’s still seeing colors, and doesn’t know how the hell he got here.

He manages to use his one arm to prop himself into a semi-sitting position, but his head is pounding and he can’t focus, his vision going in and out.

“Who... the hell... is Bucky?” he finally drawls with a voice like sandpaper. He sways. The words actually feel like they scrape the sides of his mouth as they come out, it’s so dry; he’s not sure when’s the last time he spoke. Or the last time he was awake.

Or the last time he was sober.

The man looks apologetic. “I– is that not your name? I’m sorry, that’s what the note said, I just thought–”

He doesn’t even have chance to digest what the stranger’s saying before the wave of nausea comes on like a tsunami: quick and unsuspecting. Just as his face twists in discomfort, the strange man takes a step forward, arm outstretched as if to help. He gags.

And then he throws up on Blondey and is dragged back into the darkness.

\---

This time, Bucky wakes up with an empty stomach, which is a blessing, because he’s not sure how long he was dry-heaving over the side of the bed, too weak to make it to a goddamn toilet, but he knows if there was anything left in him, he’d be hurling it up right about now. His stomach seems to roll inside of him.

“Hi, there.” It’s the man again. Shit. The punk’s hovering as Bucky sobers up, enough that he can finally get a good look at him. He’s a regular blonde-haired, blue-eyed American sweetheart who looks like he’s about to bring the power of dance to a small town. Blondey’s got a strong, square jaw, clean-shaven, and cropped gold hair. Even though the guy’s huge and clearly ripped, he’s dressed humbly in a black sweatshirt and jeans, of which he promptly shoves his hands into the pockets. He’s objectively attractive, and to make matters worse, he’s standing by the window that has its curtains (thankfully) drawn, so the light that escapes the corners of the windows is giving the guy a freaking halo.

“No offense, but... who the fuck are you?” Bucky asks groggily, with no bite in his tone. Still, his Ma would kill him if she ever heard him talking like this, God rest her soul. In his defense, he’s between theories that either a) he’s dead and has been found by an angel, b) he paid a hooker for a good ( _great_ , judging by the aforementioned handsome angel guy) time last night, or c) he was abducted during his last high and is being held for ransom. The first two seem more likely – what would anyone want with a washed-up crackhead like him?

“Oh! Oh, sorry, I’m Steve. Steve Rogers.” Gold-boy sticks out his right hand for the shaking. Bucky glares at it, unmoving. “...And...you are?” Gold-boy Steve tries awkwardly.

“No. No no. It’s still your turn to answer questions, pal. Where the hell am I?” Bucky gets his words out, but grimaces with pain as his head _throbs_. It’s not an I-missed-my-two-o-clock-coffee headache, it’s a tiny-gnome-inside-my-brain-going-after-everything-in-sight-with-a-pick-axe kind of headache.

“Oh, God. You don’t remember any of it? Well, I guess you were pretty obliterated...You’re at my house.” Bucky’s eyes widen. “Wait, no, that sounds bad – it’s a halfway house. I just run it. It’s a place for people to get clean, have a second chance, you know? Your friend dropped you off night before last, but she only left a note so I don’t really know...what’s going on with you,” Steve explains hastily, appearing nervous as Bucky continues to stare at him. “I’ve been checking on you, takin’ care of you and all. We were pretty worried. Not to be an asshole, but you’re in bad shape, man. Clint – one of the other guys – thought you were gonna kick the bucket. Almost had to call the police.”

Bucky’s fully sitting up now, which frees his arm to run his hand distressedly through his long, lanky hair. He immediately regrets it – the hair’s in clumps and feels like the inside of a McDonald’s takeout bag. He grimaces. Steve seems to be letting him absorb everything. Time doesn’t seem to exist in this four-walled bedroom, just stretches of feeling like shit interrupted by a few more pieces of the puzzle delivered by Gold-boy Steve, so he couldn’t really say how long he sat there, trying to pull himself together. Trying to will up enough anger to jump out of bed cursing and shove his way out the front door. Trying to tell himself that this isn’t real, it hasn’t really gotten this bad, his life is still under control. He tries really fucking hard to take some deep breaths.

“Shit,” he finally whispers to himself, eyes stinging. He takes shallow, shaky breaths, tries to swallow. “ _Shit._ ” Clamps his remaining hand over his mouth.

“Hey,” Gold-boy says, taking a seat on the edge of his bed _(without permission_ , Bucky thinks). “I know it might feel like rock bottom or something, but I promise you that everyone else in this house has woken up real similar. Cloudy memory, blacked out, can’t remember things. Maybe embarrassed, or scared, but out here...you’re not alone.”

“Right,” Bucky snorts, but he doesn’t make eye contact. “And where exactly is ‘out here?’ anyway?”

“We’re in Detroit,” Steve starts.

“ _What_?” Bucky spits, tensing. Enough of the surprises, Christ. He got dropped in _Michigan_ of all places? His body physically recoils from the information, and it makes his stomach lurch unpleasantly again; he shivers.

“Look,” Gold-Boy, _Steve_ says, tension leaving his shoulders. “This place is strictly voluntary. You’re not obligated to stay, or get help, or anything. That’s a choice you’ve gotta make yourself. Most of the time people come here on their own, so I’m sorry your friend just dropped you off like that. She seemed pretty worried though. Said you were getting the sweats on her couch, but she didn’t want to get you in no trouble. That’s all. So, y’know, if you’re feeling up to it, you can head out. No ball and chain here.”

Bucky just looks at him blankly, blinking slow. He’s hearing, but he’s mostly concentrating on not gagging. Christ, he feels _awful_. He knew withdrawals would be bad, of course, but this...this feels like getting steam-rolled, lit on fire, and repeatedly hit with a hammer all at once. He starts to look for a duffel bag, a backpack, anything Nat might’ve left for him, just one more hit to get him _through_ this...

“Your stuff’s in a locker, downstairs. Well, except your clothes. They’re in the wash. And we had to confiscate the heroin, which I’m sure you can understand,” Steve says knowingly with an irresistible calm in his voice. It’s not his first rodeo.

Bucky’s torn. There’s a youthful part of him that reveres the nostalgic feeling of being taken care of and having someone authoritative to just tell you what to do and how to do it. But there’s a stronger part of him that says _fuck that I’m a goddamn adult and also I need some goddamn smack in my veins right this minute._

“I need, look, I’m sorry, you’ve got a fine gig here, but I really, really need...need my...” Bucky starts, jabbering and sweating, but when he glances up to look Steve in the eyes, he catches his own reflection in the mirror in the corner of the room.

Everything stops for a second; he forgets all the sentences that were jumbling in his already jumbled-up brain.

He looks...scary. Skinny doesn’t really begin to cover it – he lands on the word _gaunt_. His cheekbones are protruding through what can barely be called stubble anymore, overgrown as it is, and his eyes have dark circles beneath them, and – Jesus, take a black and white photo of him and he could be something out of the Great Depression. Track marks and purpling bruises work their way up his remaining arm, looking almost as aggressive as the gnarled and raised scar tissue on his left shoulder – he doesn’t even _want_ to know what his thighs must look like right about now.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs, nodding compassionately. It annoys Bucky to no end.

“You guys should put the fucking mirror away. It’s just cruel.” While Bucky glares, shallow breaths coming out uneven, Steve moves to get off the bed. Finally, he sighs and turns around with his hands on his hips in a paternal way that Bucky wants to vomit again.

“If I may?” Blondey asks (rhetorically, because he doesn’t wait for a response before he continues). “Mirrors aren’t cruel. They’re honest.” He shrugs, and it’s starting to piss him off _real_ bad.

“Where do you get off, man?” Bucky snaps. “Look, I don’t know what kind of creepy savior complex you’ve got going on, or why you get turned on by taking care of chumps who’ve let their lives fall to shit, but I don’t need your goddamn pity and frankly, I don’t see how it’s any of your business. My time dying in your hotel-for-junkies is up, and I’m done rotting here so you can feel better about your fucking self. So stop lookin’ at me like that, Christ.”

He throws off the covers, only barely processing that none of these clothes are actually his and leaving the thought of someone undressing him while he was unconscious for later. His head pounds as he tries to push his feet into his sneakers. He fumbles ungracefully, trying agitatedly to get the goddamn shoes on, which he’s realizing now are _not_ slip-ons as he embarrasses himself on Steve’s floor, getting more worked up by the minute.

“Excuse you, but before you go making assumptions about me, and my past, and my _complexes_ , how about you think long and hard about the assumptions people would make about you and how that would make you feel,” Steve responds harshly.

Bucky makes a sound between annoyance and frustration, tying his laces and giving up quickly.

“Can I at least get your name? For my records?” this Steve asshole dares to ask.

“James,” he spits, not looking up.

“That’s so weird...I could’ve sworn the note said _Bucky_ ,” Steve says, more to himself than to Bucky, who has finally got his shoes on and is turning to leave.

“What note?”

“The...the note your friend left. She didn’t stay long. You were sort of, um, left on our doorstep.” Steve visibly softens. “It was just a piece of paper torn from a notebook, it said your name was Bucky, you were on some medications and needed help. That it was an emergency.”

There’s a painful sinking in Bucky’s stomach, imagining Natasha’s shaky hand as she scribbled out a plea for help and dumped him at a halfway house in the middle of the night. “It’s my nickname,” he blurts out. Why is he humoring this guy?

“Oh. But earlier, you– you said ‘Who the hell is Bucky?’ Like you didn’t know your own...”

“I was high as a fucking kite, dude. ‘Sides, I dissociate sometimes. And I – don’t know why I’m tellin’ you this. Where’s the door?” he huffs, needing fresh air. He’s gonna lose his lunch. Well, figuratively. He’s not actually sure when he ate last.

“It’s down the hall, third door on your left. But, uh, can I ask you something, just one more thing, before you leave?” Steve says, almost shy now. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“As long as it’s not about my life choices,” Bucky responds, agitated, though it’s not like he has anywhere to go.

“It’s not. It’s – I was just wondering, with that accent, if you might be from Brooklyn?”

Finally, Bucky’s hearing something intelligent come out of the guy’s mouth. He stops in his tracks, his hand on the door knob, and turns around, caught off guard.

“Born ‘n’ raised,” he says, a note of confusion in his voice. “How’d ya know?”

Steve grins from ear to ear. “Born ‘n’ raised.”

“No shit.”

\---

When he returns from the bathroom, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Bucky follows Steve down the hallway.

He’s agreed to _just one_ cup of coffee in the house kitchen before he leaves. Just the one.

The kitchen and living room of Steve’s halfway house are connected on the first floor, where Bucky’s been sweating out whatever cocktail of drugs he’d gotten his hands on last (frighteningly, he honestly can’t remember) and it’s immediately obvious that this is the social hub of the house; people are cooking, someone’s washing dishes and throwing dirty rags at someone else on the couch, but everyone’s laughing. They’re a rowdy bunch, joking and yelling out above the noise of the TV and the loud shuffling and knocking of the foosball table. One of the guys looks like he can’t be much older than fifteen, and between all their legs runs some kind of mutt with his tongue lapping happily outside his mouth.

The house itself feels old, with hardwood floors and white walls, though there are a few baseball posters hanging around, perhaps to cover holes, the way they’re so oddly placed. It’s a welcoming house, all warm browns and eggshell creams, with wooden furniture and pastel blue couches surrounded by a hodgepodge of what appear to be garage sale scores – misfitting lamps and bean bag chairs and mismatched recliners and a coffee table Mod-podge’d with comic books. It becomes quickly apparent that the house doesn’t have air conditioning, and all the windows are open to let the house breathe. It’s a muggy summer here in – apparently – southeast Michigan.

Bucky staggers in first, looking like absolute hell in a tank top and big, oversized gray sweatpants (though maybe everything’s just oversized with all the weight he’s lost), Steve only a step behind. Immediately, the room erupts into cheering and hooting.

“Who’s the knew guy?!” shouts a voice from the sink.

“He lives!” says another one.

“Hey! Welcome, my man!” Someone fist bumps him. Hands are outstretched for the shaking; this time, Bucky takes them. Just to be polite.

“Pipe down, guys,” Steve laughs. “He’s still a Day 1.”

“Oh shit! Sorry, man. Can we get you anything?” the voices are whispered now, as if they know the way ears ring and heads throb during a black tar withdrawal.

“You holding up okay?”

“Someone should turn up the AC for this guy, it’s hot as balls.”

“We don’t have AC!”

“See, Steve, this is what I’ve been telling you about getting some damn AC up in this place.”

Bucky looks around at all the faces, feeling off-put and not so sure he’s a fan of the spotlight at this exact moment of his life. Some appear friendlier than others – the teenager is practically glowing with enthusiasm; the rest of them take him in seriously, calculating.

“What’s...what’s a ‘Day 1?’” he asks quietly, so only Gold-boy can hear.

“Er, withdrawals usually start between 6 to 12 hours after someone’s last hit. It’s, uh, it’s your first full day out of bed. Since.” Bucky can tell Steve’s being careful with his words, careful not to assume. It’s cute, but Bucky’s not once for niceties; he practically barks a laugh.

“Heroin, Steve. You can say it. I use heroin.”

“Okay,” Steve smiles at him and claps a big hand on his shoulder. “Now make way, I’m making coffee. Here, have a seat.”

Bucky sits down at the kitchen table that Steve’s pulled a chair from, finding himself sitting across from a sharp-looking man wearing hearing aids as Steve parts the sea of bright eyes to get into the kitchen.

“Clint Barton, at your service,” the man – Clint – introduces. Bucky shakes his hand too, starting to feel unwell again. His face breaks out in a sweat; he keeps licking his lips.

“Barnes,” Bucky says. “Good to meet you.”

 _Hearing’s bad,_ Clint signs. _Any chance you know ASL?_

Bucky gives Clint a crooked smile. _Yes. Some. It’s hard with one hand._

“Stop talking about me, you two!” Steve teases happily from the kitchen, a dish towel thrown over his muscled shoulder as he refills the coffee filter with fresh grounds. “Didn’t know you knew sign language, Buck. Oh, sorry. Is it okay if I call you Buck?”

Before Bucky has a chance to reply, Clint flashes Bucky a shit-eating grin.

 _Let’s talk shit about Steve_ , Clint signs, wiggling his eyebrows at Bucky.

 _I don’t know him,_ Bucky signs back. Clint deflates.

 _Are you going to stay here?_ he asks Bucky.

_I don’t know._

Just then, the back door, which Bucky now sees opens to a big yard with the greenest grass he’s ever laid eyes on, opens to reveal a lean black man with a crisp goatee; the dog runs in ahead of him, craving attention from one of the couch loungers, while the rest of the bunch erupt into laughter and greetings for the new arrival.

“Wilson! What’s _crack-_ in’?” one shouts.

“Still not funny, Scott,” Steve scolds from where he’s finally pouring the coffee into mugs.

“Kinda funny,” a voice yells back.

 _Who is that?_ Bucky signs. He likes being able to communicate privately, feeling overwhelmed by all of the people and the impressive amount of noise they’re capable of.

 _S-A-M W-I-L-S-O-N,_ Clint spells. _He’s a live-in counselor. Steve makes the place run and pays the bills. Sam helps us get back on our feet. Deal with the guilt. Talk through stuff._

 _Everyone seems to love him,_ Bucky observes. Someone even hugs the guy.

_We do._

Steve finally starts moving to the kitchen table where Clint and Bucky are seated, two steaming mugs of coffee in his hands, the red-and-white checkered dish towel still draped domestically over his shoulder and a lop-sided smile creeping onto his face. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this work is Steve’s happy place.

“One for you,” he says, putting a mug that reads _I Don’t Need Google, My Wife Knows Everything!_ , “and one for me.” He sets the other down in front of himself – it reads _Send Us More Tourists, The Last Ones Were Delicious! West Palm Beach, Florida_ with a big cartoon alligator wearing sunglasses on it. Bucky can’t deny he’s amused.

“Cream and sugar?” Steve offers. Bucky shakes his head.

“Where’s mine?” Clint whines, aloud for Steve’s sake.

“New program we’re starting up. It’s called make your own goddamn coffee,” Steve says with a wink. Clint rolls his eyes and curses in sign language, which Steve clearly doesn’t understand, though Bucky imagines he gets the gist. Besides, he finishes the string of profanities with a universal middle finger.

“Nice mugs,” Bucky comments, enjoying how obtusely random they are as he brings his to his lips. That, and he doesn’t know what else to say.

“We shop at Goodwill. Money’s tight, but we make it work. Right, Clint?” Steve shoulders Barton playfully.

 _Fuck him_ , Clint signs to Bucky, smiling again. _Look how big his head is compared to his body_. Bucky almost spits out his coffee, which would be regrettable, because it’s practically breathing life back into these abused old bones of his.

“Stop telling him horrible things about this place, Barton! I know you can hear me. And talk just fine,” Steve complains. Clint winks at Bucky.

It’s at that moment – only two sips into a surprisingly strong cup of coffee – that the sweating escalates to the point where the banter and joking can no longer distract him. He feels like he’s going to pass out. His hand starts to tremor, enough that he has to set the cup down, afraid he’ll burn himself from the sloshing. The nausea is clawing its way through him again, the ebb and flow of it starting to make him lurch.

 _Bathroom’s that way,_ Clint signs knowingly, and Bucky tears off without a word.

\---

He wakes up feeling like his insides are on the outside. The only relief is the cool tile pressing hard against his cheek, grounding him and giving him the tiniest reprieve from the oppressive humidity. The bathroom is a comforting shade of evergreen – or at least, the floor is. Bucky stares only straight ahead, feeling dizzy. He doesn’t move a muscle, hesitates to breathe for the way it makes his insides ache. He’s been miserably sick on Steve’s bathroom all day.

He forces himself to enjoy this brief interlude, though – these precious moments before he’s pulling himself up to the lip of the toilet bowl by his one arm, heaving again. Waiting for it all to be over. His bicep better be fucking huge by the end of this.

He’s dying. That’s it. That’s what this is. It’s _dying._  
  
He lies there, making deals with the devil. Mouthing long soliloquies to his late mother, knowing _knowing_ this is karma for the time he smashed her heirloom perfume bottle from her great grandmother. It’s punishment for the nights she caught him with nicotine stains on his fingertips and he lied through his teeth. He promises to a God he certainly doesn’t believe in that he’ll be a better brother, a better friend, a better veteran. He makes a list of all the people he should’ve apologized to but never did. He’ll volunteer. He’ll rescue a cat. He’ll join the Peace Corps. He’ll do fucking anything.

Just _make it stop._

It’s abundantly clear that Steve wasn’t kidding – the people in this house have definitely been around the block before if their around-the-clock care says anything. Every time he startles awake with sweat dripping down his neck and a crick in his back, he finds at least two glasses of water within arm’s reach. Someone’s taken the liberty of tying his hair back, which would creep him out if it didn’t feel so good to keep his neck cool and not get puke in his overgrown hair. At some point, a plug-in fan appears near his face. Once, he wakes to Steve setting an icy washcloth on the back of his neck and shivers with relief.

He remains limp on the bathroom floor for the greater part of three days, though he has no real way to mark time passing besides the tiny window above the shower and the absurd number of Gatorade bottles he’s gone through. Although he wishes he could say it was all a blur, the truth is he recalls every minute of agony he spent perishing on a stranger’s bathroom tile. The thought of just finding a Percocet and putting this whole business to an end crossed his mind one hundred times, but it was too late – he was too weak, unable and unwilling to drag his sorry ass off the floor, and then what? Find some drug dealers in a foreign city? It’s a catch-22; he needs the drugs, and he’s too goddamn fragile to get up and get them. Plus, he doesn’t have a phone. Or a dollar to his name. He can’t tell if he hates Nat or loves her for it.

“Just a little morphine,” he’d whined to someone hovering, taking their turn to babysit him (he thinks it was the Wilson guy). “Just some painkillers to get me through this. N-nothing hard. Nothing hard, man, I swear. Please.”

The man had rubbed his back as he convulsed on the turquoise tile. “Hang in there, dude. This too shall pass.”

“You sound like a white girl’s Instagram,” Bucky had snarled in frustration (well, he had tried to snarl. In retrospect, it was probably a little more pathetic than that).

“Check yourself,” probably-Sam had replied, his hand recoiling from Bucky’s back and the door slamming behind him.

Finally, Steve walked in during one of Bucky’s more lucid moments.

“How we doin’, James?” he asked kindly, shutting the door behind him and taking a seat on the rim of the bathtub. The small window above the shower cast a refreshing morning glow behind him.

“It’s...Bucky,” Bucky muttered, gagging on the floor and beginning to hoist himself back up.

“Here, here, let me help,” Steve said, putting his hands – big and strong, Bucky notices through the discomfort – around Bucky’s ribcage and pulling him up. Through the nausea, Bucky feels something in him react to the man’s touch. He’s surprisingly...gentle, for his stature, and holds Bucky there as he dry heaves. Nothing comes up. He’s been on empty for a while now.

When the heaving stops, Steve brings Bucky to a sitting position with his back against the tub, and Bucky could swear his hands linger a second too long, but then they’re gone, and the thought disappears as Bucky lays his head back and closes his eyes, groaning.

“No...no, the room is spinning, I–” Bucky mumbles, and Steve lets him all the way to the ground. Bucky is grateful to be horizontal again.

“Okay, okay,” Steve whispers softly. “You’re okay, Bucky. There you go, punk.”

Bucky tingles as he lays there, surprised that in this most vulnerable and humiliating of moments, he doesn’t want Steve to leave. He likes the company. He likes the steady hand rubbing circles into his back as he curls up on the tile, catlike.

“You need anything? A toothbrush? A shower? You smoke cigarettes?” Steve asks, slowly and calmly with a hushed voice so as to not rattle the sleeping cobra that is Bucky’s never-ending headache.

“No, no, I don’t–” Bucky whispers in a paper-thin voice. Then, “Did you say cigarettes?”

Steve smiles softly above him, still bathed in the glow of the window.

“Marlboro Reds or American Spirits?”

“Spirits.”

Steve plucks a cigarette from the pack bulging in his pocket, lights it, and holds it down to Bucky’s lips. Bucky’s able to crawl and prop his head up with his elbow enough to take a drag.

“You don’t strike me as a smoker,” Bucky comments, feeling the nicotine run laps through his bloodstream. The nausea and the headache clear almost instantly, and he can’t believe how _good_ the cigarette burns or how he hadn’t thought of this sooner.

“‘M not,” Steve laughs. “But whether you believe it or not, I do know what I’m doing. Here.” He leans down, and Bucky leans forward, into the hand and the cigarette, and closes his eyes. Steve pulls away, and Bucky exhales, a dragon curled around a porcelain throne. He hears shuffling above him, concludes Steve is standing on the rim of the bathtub and opening the window, but doesn’t have the energy to glance up to check.

Steve draws a bath as Bucky continues to sway, laying on his side, eyes closed. The cigarette reappears in front of him, and he puts it between his lips and inhales. _Suck on it like a straw_ , he remembers Dugan telling him at their base in Afghanistan. _Atta boy._

The smoke goes down like water. Steve breathes heavily above him and eventually steps quietly out of the room, thinking Bucky’s asleep. Though he’s sure someone will be back to check on him – he’s a flight risk and they know it.

In an hour, Bucky will drag this abandoned temple of skin and bones he calls a body into the water, and he will lay there, and he will let the past ooze out of him into the murky water that smells like lavender and cigarettes. Like osmosis, he will let the bad blood flow right on out of him.

 

There are three rapt knocks on his door. His bedroom door, in fact – he’d finally advanced from laying on the bathroom floor to laying in a bed with periodic runs to the bathroom. A real upgrade, he thinks pathetically.

In response to the knocks, Bucky looks up quickly – a soldier’s reflex – to find Steve poking his head into the small bedroom. There’s an unmistakably mischievous grin on Gold-boy’s face, and he’d be kidding himself if something about that up-to-no-good, sinful smile didn’t stir something inside of him. He kicks himself internally – he’s in the middle of the most physically intense detox of his life, how is he thinking about things he’d like to stick his dick in?

“What’d you _want_?” Bucky groans like an adolescent whose just been woken by his mother for school. Except he’s a retired soldier and recovering heroin addict. And he’s 26. And it’s 4:00 in the afternoon.

“Get dressed,” Steve commands. Bucky doesn’t move from where he’s lying in his bed under a pile of blankets. Bucky is always cold. “Word on the street is you can keep food down now. We’re getting Thai.”

“Why Thai?” Bucky mumbles, squinting against the light as Steve turns it on. Cruel. He hisses at it.

“Jesus, you’re somethin’,” Steve laughs from the doorway. “Because it’s my favorite restaurant. Now get your ass dressed or you’re buying.”

 

They walk to the restaurant. It’s hole-in-the-wall Thai if Bucky’s ever seen it, but in the state he’s in, he sure as hell wouldn’t want anything nicer. Even sober, he looks like a hot mess – skin almost translucent he’s so pale, dark bags under his eyes, thin as a rail, his dark hair parted down the middle and giving him foreboding curtains to frame his sunken eyes. No, it’s good Steve chose a place off the beaten path. He wouldn’t want to scare anybody.

The waitress brings a pot of coffee, which helps him perk up considerably, though the acid turns his already queasy stomach. They order – drunken noodles for Steve and Pad Thai, no spice for Bucky, who only knows one Thai dish and can’t upset his sensitive stomach.

They look at each other in silent disbelief for a few moments, Steve somehow the foil to Bucky’s lawlessness, his dark hair and furrowed brows and bad attitude. Steve is light on his feet, friendly with all the ironically Vietnamese servers, groomed to a tee. It makes Bucky curious as he inspects him, his rescuer.

“What was your poison?” Bucky asks, surprising himself with how blunt he is. Admittedly, Steve’s already seen him officiate the wedding between rock and bottom these last five days; he’s got nowhere to go but up.

“What’d ya mean?” Steve asks, stirring cream and sugar into his steaming mug.

“I mean, the drug that did you in. You implied you ain’t got such a pretty past either. You run a goddamn rehab center out of your backyard for crying out loud. So what did it?”

“Sheesh, Bucky. It was pot. And _keep your voice down_.”

“You’re shitting me,” Bucky laughs. “You smoked a blunt? That’s it?”

Steve looks down and smiles sadly into his coffee, cocks his head; it’s the look that means there’s more to the story and that he’s told it before, and Bucky’s intrigued.

Finally, Steve speaks. “No, no, no. I didn’t smoke the stuff. I sold it.”

That only makes Bucky balk more, eyes popping. “You. Steve Rogers, the friendly boy-next-door who collects tacky mugs from Goodwill. _You_ were a dealer? I’ll admit, Rogers, I did not peg you for street material.”

“My Ma was sick,” Steve says, as if that explains it. He shakes his head as all remnants of the smile fade away. “Real sick, back in the day. Ovarian cancer. We didn’t have the money for the hospital bills _and_ the rent, and I was just in high school, so I got to sellin’. Nothing big at first. Like I said. Pot. That kind of thing.”

“Shit, dude,” Bucky says, eloquent as ever.

“She died in ’07, though,” Steve says, downright sober and looking Bucky straight in the eye.

“I’m sorry to hear it, man. I really am.” A pause. “So, that was it for you? Selling weed in high school, and then you turned it all around?”

Steve laughs darkly now. “Not quite.”

Bucky waits patiently for him to continue. He crosses and re-crosses his legs.

Steve begins gruffly. “When my mom died, I had nothing. I’d always wanted to join up, you know, go military and serve my country, but of course, this was before Obama undid Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and besides, I’ve got asthma pretty bad. I guess I just figured it wasn’t my war. If we’re being honest, I’d already found my war: the streets of Brooklyn. It lit me up – I was high on the adrenaline and living on the cusp of getting caught and had no one to miss me when I was gone. From there it’s the same old story. You control the drugs until they control you. At one point I had eight different Twitter accounts to track the cops. Even stole one of their radios. I couldn’t tell you how many felony’s worth of crack I kept in my car at a time. It was bad news.”

It takes a second for Bucky to realize that his mouth is hanging open. He’s not sure exactly what he expected Steve to say, but it sure as hell wasn’t this.

“So, what made you stop? Get caught?” he pursues.

Their entrees arrive. They quiet down a minute.

“Nope,” Steve replies, playing with his sunglasses on the table, ignoring the steaming dish in front of him. “I was reading the paper on a Sunday morning, totally unsuspecting, and saw one of my, er, clients, in the obits. He died of overdose. On my drugs. I cried my eyes out that morning, I really did.” Jesus, Steve’s the only drug dealer Bucky’s ever met that would dare admit to crying.

“Damn, that’s heavy stuff.” Bucky forks a mouthful of peanut-sauce-covered broccoli into his starved body. He almost moans it tastes so goddamn good.

“It is what it is. I feel guilty about it every day of my life. The constant battle in Brooklyn – the streets, the drugs, the cops, the law, the back alley fights, the money – it finally brought me a casualty. I quit right then and there. Dropped the rest of my cargo – probably 10k’s worth – in the East River and flew somewhere new. Ended up in Chicago for a little while before I settled here in Michigan. I needed to clear my head, get away. The halfway house... it lets me give back. I can prevent those OD’s. Not all of ‘em, of course. But even just one person, you know, that’s enough.”

Bucky is in absolute awe. A small part of him was hoping that Steve wouldn’t be as righteous and pure and just plain _good_ as he seemed. He’s ashamed, but he was hoping there would be some chink in the armor. But no. Steve was selling drugs to pay for his mom’s cancer treatment, and then quit the business altogether and tried to help recovering addicts. You can’t make this shit up. Feeling suddenly ashamed, he decides to change the subject.

“I’m glad you didn’t enlist,” Bucky finally says, finishing the last of his coffee and pulling his black baseball cap lower over his eyes.

“Excuse me?” Steve replies, more surprised than anything.

“It’s just, you see war real old school. The courage, the glory. You sound like a World War II fighter pilot or something. That’s not what it’s really like out there anymore man. It’s...I don’t even know. I feel like it might’ve eaten you alive.”

“I take it you served,” Steve says, sounding a little stung. But Bucky isn’t sorry. The war is no place for the lover of the battle.

“Two tours. Iraq and Afghanistan,” he supplies, somber. The phantom limb tingles.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What’s your story, Bucky Barnes? Will you even tell me the truth?”

“Cross my heart,” Bucky says. “Honestly, after all you’ve done for me, it’s the least I could do. But first, let me inhale this.”

They eat in silence, Bucky scarfing down the Pad Thai and Steve playing with his droopy noodles, slick on his fork and falling off more than not. It makes Bucky almost laugh through his stuffed face, but the conversation’s been too serious for outright chuckling.

Bucky finishes quickly and slurps down the complementary glass of water to cool his tongue and wash down his lunch. Dinner? Bucky feels liminal, like these past few days have made time irrelevant. He’s forgotten that people have routines, schedules. It dawns on him that he has no idea what day of the week it is. Actually, he doesn’t even know what _month_ it is, just that it’s gotta be summer based on the humidity and how everything’s in full bloom.

“So. Your story?” Steve prods, noticing that Bucky’s finished.

“Don’t you already know the story, pal? You’ve been in this business awhile, haven’t you? I’m sure you’ve deduced it by now.”

“I don’t like to assume,” Steve states, matter-of-fact. Of course he doesn’t.

“Well, I find that honorable, to tell you the truth. But I’m just another damn statistic in the Opioid Crisis, my friend. I...well, shit, you already know I’m from Brooklyn. Funny we didn’t run into each other there, honestly – I felt like I knew everyone in a five block radius. I was real popular in school, good luck with the ladies and occasional gent. An asshole in the classroom, though, drove my teachers crazy when I talked back and then got perfect scores on their tests. I was _that_ guy. Confident as hell, invincible even. Which is probably why I got it in my head that I ought to join up, although the honest truth of it was no matter my grades, the family didn’t have two nickels to rub together. There was no way I was gonna go to college without military bucks to pay for it.

“Iraq was fine, I guess. As far as deployments go. I came home and took some engineering classes in between. Afghanistan’s where the mine went off. We were on a train. It derailed, and that’s the last time I saw lefty,” Bucky admits sheepishly, folding in on himself, his right hand mindlessly fingering the stump of scar tissue of his left shoulder, barely hidden in the flap of his T-shirt.

“What happened next?” Steve asks, thirsty for the rest of the story, his meal abandoned in front of him.

“I was found by a pretty harmless group of nomads. I mean, I didn’t know that’s who they were at the time. I thought the Taliban had got me. When they realized I wasn’t worth much to them, and I was bleeding out, they dragged me outside and...” he cringes, remembering. “Some of them tried to help me though. They were good people. Made me look at the war real different, after that. But my men were looking for me, and I was only twenty miles out, and they found me. I got lucky, they said. I was discharged.”

“Honorably, I imagine?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods. Swallows.

“When I got back to the States, everything was different. I kept hearing blasts that weren’t happening, or thinking cars starting were land mines popping off. They pumped me full of painkillers, you know. Vicodin. Morphine.” Bucky sighs nostalgically. “The good stuff. But you know how it is. Shit’s too good. They try to wean you off of it, and they send you home, and your prescription runs out, and you’re fucked. Between the shell shock, the amputation, and the addiction, I couldn’t _not_ be doped up. It was the only way to drag myself out of bed in the morning.

“My sister kicked me out, and with good reason. I moved in with a friend – Romanov, the woman who left me on your doorstep, I think – and lost track of days and then months. And now,” Bucky says, putting his fork and knife on his plate and pausing to say thank you as the waitress arrives to take it away. “I’m at a Thai restaurant five days clean with a complete stranger. That’s the story.” Comfortably, Bucky leans his elbow on the table and bends forward, as if daring Steve to say something.

“Not a _complete_ stranger, I hope,” Steve says, and blushes, which seems out of place to Bucky, whose just told the man about the ugliest parts of himself.

And yet, Gold-boy still manages to surprise him.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Steve adds, confidently folding a hand over his, just for a few seconds. “I really am, Bucky.”

“Jesus, do you ever stop looking at people like that?” Bucky laughs, a blush now rosy-ing _his_ sharp, protruding cheekbones. He looks away. “It’s creepy. You’re gonna scare away all these druggies if you keep actin’ up like this.”

“Haven’t scared one away yet,” Steve says. And winks.

\---

A little over a week since Natasha abandoned him here (and they’ll certainly be having words over that little stunt, starting with _WHY MICHIGAN???_ ), Bucky wakes up in the morning (before noon, which is big for him) and feels relatively not-awful. He’d seen the Thai food again later that night, but now he hasn’t crawled his way to the bathroom in a whole day and a half. He stretches in his bed, breathing life back into his limbs, and realizes quite suddenly that he’s finally strong enough to leave. Sure, they flushed his heroin and sure, a junkie in Queens currently has his cell phone and all his contacts, dealers and otherwise, but he’s strong. Well, he’s weak, but clear-headed and can probably keep down bread and water. So, strong enough to hitchhike back to New York and get the hell out of this crazy babysitting-for-adults setup. It’s been real, but Detroit is not his home.

He grabs his duffel off the floor – Natasha had the decency of packing him a couple of shirts, briefs, and pants and a bottle of water. Now that he thinks on it, he didn’t really own much more than that, so there’s no dramatic, contemplative packing to do as he zips the thing up and tosses it over his shoulder. It feels anticlimactic.

It’s not that he can’t see himself thriving here. Sure, all the rules and requirements are a lot, and sure, he hasn’t had a curfew since he was sixteen. He’d probably get work, cleaning toilets or something, have food, a few friendly faces. But someone else deserves this room. He let men in his battalion die. He could’ve gotten better and he chose narcism. He fucked over his family. He fucked over a lot of people, really. He even stabbed a guy in Central Park. He slept around for drug money, letting people crawl under his skin so he could crawl out of it later. He must’ve ruined Natasha’s life. He’s a cancer on society; _he’s_ the guy conservatives don’t want to give food stamps to, and honestly, he doesn’t blame them. Why does he deserve to eat? Why does he deserve this random kindness that he’s only stumbled into, of no effort of his own? He’s a ghost of Bucky Barnes, a hardened ex-soldier who brought the war home with him.

Detroit is a city wrought with problems, if the news is anything to go by. There’s got to be a knocked-up teenager who needs somewhere to go; a queer kid like himself who had to run away from home; addicts like Clint who at least have kids to get back to. Bucky’s no one. He is no one and he’s got no one. What’s the point of reviving him? He knows he’s not worth all this.

He hesitates at the bedroom door, shifting his weight between legs. Bucky knows exactly what happens to assholes like him who get caught between the drug and the rest of their life. He knows if he walks through that door, he’ll probably never have a relationship with his little sister again. Maybe never see Natasha again. Definitely never see Steve or Clint or Sam again. And it shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter, because smack helps you forget all your burned bridges – _and exploded trains_ , he adds darkly – and it quickens up the end to this shitty life, which Bucky has been running toward at full speed for so long now. These people shouldn’t matter to him. He’s known them for, what, a week?

But now he’s already gone to hell. Hell was the seemingly endless hours of existential pain spent with his face smooshed against Steve’s bathroom tile. Hell was feeling each and every cell in his body screaming at him for seven days straight, mad at him for getting on the drugs and mad at him for getting off the drugs all at the same time. Hell was migraines so bad he blacked out, fell over. Hell was losing fifteen pounds he didn’t have to lose as he rotted in his own flesh. If he wants it to, hell can mark the end of his last life, and this moment the rebirth of another.

He’s twenty-seven years old. Only twenty-seven.

The bag thuds to the floor. He sobs quietly against the door, into the crook of his elbow. He cries every tear that he never cried when they told him his Ma had passed on, or when he watched his mangled left arm go flying in the explosion, or when his unit, the Howling Commandos, had to retreat with two less soldiers in step, or when he woke up and realized how much memory, and time, he had lost, or when he realized he’d let himself spiral so far out of control that the only people willing to take care of him anymore were complete strangers in Michigan.

He presses his hand against the door and leans his head against it, thinking rapidly. How bad would it really be to be sober all the time? How bad would it really be to live in this strange, new city of cars and music and kind Midwestern people?

How bad would it really be to come back from the dead?

And Steve. God, Steve’s got to be the most patient man he’s ever met. The kind of guy who believes all people have value and something to contribute. Someone who didn’t even know him at all and still thought he was worth saving. Who is he to be the one to teach Steve that some people are beyond saving?

He leaves the duffel bag in the small bedroom – no, _his_ bedroom. He’s claiming it now. His bedroom.

It almost starts him crying all over again, having a fucking place to sleep and call his.

Bucky mozies on down the hallway toward the kitchen, taking deep, calming breaths, his hand shoved deep in his pocket (another pair of gray sweatpants, though these fit significantly better than the other pair that must have been Steve’s). He hasn’t made his own way out of his bedroom without prodding or being carried once yet, so he’s sure the house will be a little surprised. It will make a statement. But now’s as good a time as any to announce that he’s staying.

The kitchen goes silent as he walks, slow for his aching muscles, into the room, a small, close-lipped smile on his face. He licks his lips nervously as all necks crane to look at him. Steve sets his newspaper down on the table with pursed lips – clearly, he knew the day would come when Bucky would be up and about on his own again. Perhaps he just didn’t know it would be so soon, from the funny look on his face.

Bucky takes them all in awkwardly, still not too keen on being the center of attention. He nods a second, and then mutters to the floor, kicking at something that isn’t there, “So, uh, what’s for breakfast?”

When he looks back up from where he was fussing with the hardwood, Steve’s smiling like the Fourth of July. Bucky has to fight a blush as Sam moves into the kitchen to show him where the pots and pans are (accompanied by a long soliloquy about how “if you miss breakfast, you’re on your own, pal”), and just out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vision handing Clint a twenty dollar bill as Clint signs to him, _Don’t worry, my money was on you._


	2. Chapter 2

So, Bucky stays. Have you _seen_ Steve Rogers look at someone with disappointment before?

Of course he stays.

Bucky enjoys the raucous banter of the house and tries to keep track of everybody. Most of the guys have jobs in the city, everything from journalists to midnight janitors, but they pool all the money to go in on groceries and utilities and toilet paper and renting movies and video games. Bucky finds out that the mortgage is covered – forever – by a lofty billionaire that Bucky’s only read about in _Money Magazine_ (Tony Stark is not a favorite amongst military personnel, but Bucky can acknowledge philanthropy when he sees it, even if it makes him grit his teeth). Apparently, the guy saw his own share of cocaine and almost lost it all not too long ago. It’s certainly a story he’ll be asking about later.

Now that Bucky is officially staying, Steve gives him The Pamphlets, which he was certainly not expecting. They look like they were made in the 90s with WordArt and never updated, which honestly might be true, and a few details have been added in ballpoint pen.

Apparently, Sam offers all of the housemates therapy in a pseudo office he’s set up in the basement. He’s got an old leather couch down there and on his desk is a single framed picture of a man Bucky doesn’t recognize. Bucky finds out that when Steve and Sam had pulled straws when they first decided to embark on this halfway house together, Sam had opted for the basement – the coldest room in the house by far. That left Steve to have an office upstairs, but Bucky soon realizes he’s a pretty simple, minimalist guy. His ‘office’ is just a desk in his own bedroom on the second floor. Bucky’s only seen Steve’s room once, in passing, but a peek in revealed him to be a huge history buff, his room decorated with World War II memorabilia.

The first floor is always popping, what with the joint kitchen and living room being located there; it’s no wonder there was an empty room for Bucky there on the first floor – folks here are loud as hell. Although alcohol is prohibited, the small crowd of them is never anything short of rowdy, whether they’re cooking together and arguing about whose mama’s recipe is best, whooping over Super Smash Bros, wrestling with each other or Steve’s dog, or just kicking each other’s asses at Monopoly. Bucky’s surprised by how... normal they are – a house full of users covered in piercings and tattoos and the kind of scars you can’t get tripping down the stairs, and yet their favorite things to do are cook and play board games and poke fun at each other. He imagines there’s a lesson in there somewhere about books and their covers, but he tries not to think too hard on it. Thinking’s what did him in in the first place.

It’s true, though – the housemates are soft as hell, and Bucky is now applying actual effort to learn all of their names. He’s seen firsthand (or otherwise heard from Steve) that “Vision,” an ex-con with cybernetic tattoos who won’t tell anyone his real name, can hold a baby more delicately than anyone Steve has ever seen. And Clint, whose street name was Hawkeye for his perfect aim back when he was still robbing convenience stores, is just three months away from getting his kids back. Thor Odinson, who stabbed two people non-lethally while on bath salts, has a sweet tooth for chocolate like you wouldn’t believe. Dr. Banner tinkers with robotics in his room late into the night and plays with remote control planes. Peter, who’s really just an overachiever with an Adderall problem, is by far the youngest in the house, but everyone chipped in to get him his school supplies, and Clint took embarrassing first day of school pictures of him, got them printed at Walgreens, and stuck one on the fridge.

As lame as Bucky may once have thought it, there’s actually a whole collection of accomplishments on the refrigerator. Attached by two magnets is a poorly cut roll of poster board that reads “Super Star Points” and every person’s name is written on it in a vertical list, and beside each name is space to write something nice about what others have done. In Steve’s blocky, all-capital lettering beside the Super Star Points board reads, “STOP WRITING YO MAMA JOKES OR WE WILL TAKE THIS DOWN.” It elicits a chuckle from him every time. And it makes Bucky’s heart swell when he sees that someone has added his own name to the bottom of the list.

Of course, the accomplishments are posted next to the house calendar, which is covered in court dates, times and locations for VA, AA, and NA meetings, drug testing, and jail visitation hours. But it’s not quite as daunting as it used to be.

 

Despite the sausage fest, Bucky discovers that there are two women living in the house. There’s Jessica, a goth twenty-something who escaped her abusive relationship with her life and, unfortunately, a pretty severe reliance on boxed wine that reminds Bucky of Natasha’s suspect relationship with Vodka. Then there’s Wanda Maximoff, who goes solely by Scarlet and _will_ cut you if you dare to call her by her real name. Bucky’s pretty convinced that she’s the scariest person in the house and is _also_ convinced that she keeps razor blades in her hair.

Hair can’t just _shimmer_ like that, can it?

Bucky assumes that Scarlet’s got to be tough to come from where she comes from and live in a house full of roughed-up men with serious addictions and histories (except Banner, who made his own psychadelics in his living room, the genius, and turned himself in when he felt that he was out of control). But it hasn’t deterred her one bit. Scarlet’d been voted house treasurer, actually. Vision, with his intimidating face tats, follows her like a shadow.

For the most part, folks are pretty accepting of their new housemate. Bucky seemed to fit in rather seamlessly, probably in part due to the fact that he spent most of his time here thus far either restlessly tossing and turning in his own room with the door closed or on the cool tile of the nearest bathroom floor, losing both lunch and dignity.

But now Bucky’s put in a solid two weeks here – one dying, the other tiptoeing around and feeling out his niche. Really, this conversation was inevitable, and Scarlet approaches him one morning at breakfast with a pierced eyebrow raised.

“Hey, Soldier,” she calls him, a nickname he has acquired after the awkward so-what-happened-to-your-arm conversation two nights ago with a group over dinner.

“Scarlet,” he says in greeting, nodding as he inhales another slurp of coffee from his mug, an Obama campaign one that reads _YES WE CAN_.

“Must be nice, getting your coffee and meals for free and all,” she says nonchalantly, putting her chin in her hand and displaying her long, sharp black fingernails. It’s enough to make Bucky set down his mug altogether.

“It’s nice to have somewhere to curl up and sweat out the heroin,” he replies cooly, looking Scarlet right in the eyes. She twirls her amber hair.

“If you’re looking for pity, Barnes, it’s not gonna be from the girl whose been in jail six times. But good try. You throw up today?”

Bucky can’t read her – whether she’s just being her tough-as-nails self or if she actually dislikes him. But he has a feeling he knows where this conversation is going.

“Not yet,” he smiles sarcastically, looking down at his wrist as if there were a watch there (he sold his father’s 1981 Rolex for some Percocet two months ago, he remembers) and looks back at Scarlet without revealing his dismay. “You see, it’s like, 6 in the morning and I haven’t eaten anything yet. I’m sure I’ll feel like I’m falling into Dante’s inferno in the next 10 to 15 minutes.” He shrugs. The withdrawals have gotten better, but they haven’t left him. Mornings are the roughest.

“You’ve lived here for almost two weeks. If you’re planning on staying, which I am sure you are,” she says with a bite in her voice and eye-roll that Bucky doesn’t understand, “Then the house rule is that you get a job this month to start contributing ‘round here. Gotta give to receive. Tit for tat, Soldier.”

Bucky scratches his stubble (actual stubble, like, shaved-and-now-facial-hair-is-growing-back-in stubble), then scratches a nonexistent itch on his shoulder. Another side effect of the heroin. “Alright. _Alright_ , Scarlet, I get it. Now let me enjoy this coffee in peace, Jesus.”

“Two weeks,” she says ominously, and then drifts back up the stairs, presumably to her and Vision’s room.

Bucky puts his face in his hand, the stress compounding with the headache that never leaves him as he feels the sweats start to come on. His hand shakes too much to finish the coffee, so he leaves it on the kitchen table and goes back to bed, shutting the door behind him.

\---

Sam knocks on his door later that morning – what is with everyone today? Actually, he knocks at exactly 10:33 am, which Bucky now knows because someone’s been kind enough put a digital clock in his room; he’s pretty sure it was Banner, who mentioned something about how hard it is to track time passing when you’re in recovery. Bucky’s grateful to him; Bruce is quiet, like him, and he makes a mental note to get to know him, sensing an ally in this overcrowded house.

“You can come in,” Bucky strains, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and then pinching the bridge of his nose with his right hand.

“I brought Advil,” Sam says, setting down a glass of water at Bucky’s bedside and handing him two pills.

“Ha,” Bucky says darkly, glaring into the glass of water as he swallows the pills. “I remember the days when Advil used to do the trick.”

“At least you _remember_ those days,” Sam tells him, laughing a little when Bucky makes a face.

“How you doin’ today, boss?”

“I’m alive,” Bucky says uncooperatively.

“That a good thing or a bad thing?” Sam asks, cocking his head. Bucky pushes himself into a sitting position in the bed before answering.

“Haven’t figured that one out yet.”

Sam nods, seeming to understand, though Bucky realizes he knows very little of Sam Wilson, or whether Steve’s friend and live-in therapist has ever been addicted to anything himself.

“You got interests? Hobbies, I mean?” Sam wonders, taking a seat in the wooden chair in the corner of the small bedroom. It’s such a simple space: four white walls, off-white carpeting, a twin bed with puce sheets, an (empty) bureau, a nightstand, a mirror he’s kindly turned around to avoid his own reflection, and a chair. And Bucky loves it more than anything.

“I don’t remember,” Bucky admits.

“You don’t remember because of the drugs? Weren’t you only addicted for a few months?” Bucky winces when Sam says _addicted_. He forgets sometimes that he’s in a place where they call things out for what they are. _Narcotics. Heroin. Addiction. Poverty. Stealing._ He’s not totally sure he was ready to leave the world of euphemisms behind.

“Little over a year,” Bucky says, realizing that Sam catching him off guard and half asleep is making him an easy target for psychological probing, though for some reason it doesn’t bother him. “I lost some of my memory, when I fell. In the war, I mean. The arm got stuck under some metal, but the concussion really did me. I got my whole childhood up here,” he says, tapping his temple with his index finger, “But ask me about my twenties, and I couldn’t tell you much.”

“Damn,” Sam empathizes, shaking his head a little.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees.

“Well, what _do_ you like? That you remember?”

Bucky thinks, absentmindedly scratching at his thighs as he does. He’s scratching a lot, lately. “I liked...fried matzah. Like my Ma used to make,” he starts, grateful that Sam doesn’t comment on his use of the past tense. “I liked New York. The city, I mean. Cigarettes. Always liked cigarettes.”

“Anything that’s not food or drugs?” Sam asks, hands folded together in front of him.

“Yeah, yeah...” Bucky says, slow like he’s remembering for the first time in a long time. “I was really into sci-fi. You know, _Brave New World_ and _Alien_ , _Blade Runner_ and dime novels you could pick up outside of bookstores. Real hands on, excited about that stuff. And telling stories, man, I was dramatic as hell. I used to have this schtick where I would tell people I was the most hyperbolic guy in the universe.” His lips curl up in a smile before he can help himself, but it’s like fondly remembering a nephew, like the memories don’t belong to him.

Sam laughs out loud. “I love that, dude. I’m’a use that.”

“It’s yours,” Bucky chuckles, shrugging his shoulders and feeling his hair tickle his cheeks as he does. “So what’s the real reason you’re in here?”

“Couple things,” Sam says, sobering up. “As I’m sure you’ve figured out, we’ve got a couple of rules around here. Everyone’s first couple weeks are hands off, of course. Withdrawals are shit, we get that. But now, we make some compromises. That’s how this place works. Steve’s rules, not mine.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, hand on the back of his neck.

“We’ve got a contract and everything. To stay in this co-operative halfway house, we need some things from you.”

“And why are you telling me this and not Steve?” Bucky asks skeptically. Every other time someone’s laid down the law, or even come to his room, it’s been Steve.

“Steve...can’t always be unbiased,” Sam muses, thinking through his answer. He doesn’t dwell on the topic. “Point is, here’s what we need from you. Daily N.A. meetings for the first month–”

“Daily?!” Bucky interrupts, disbelieving.

“Daily,” Sam confirms, giving Bucky a stern look. “For ninety days. That’s what they recommend in their program. On top of that, you gotta meet with me once a week – you pick the day – to go over your recovery, emotional needs, and future plans. I work downtown 9-5 Monday through Friday, though, so it can’t be then.”

“Where do you work?” Bucky interjects again. He’s fidgeting now. “I do therapy work at the V.A. hospital.”

“You served?”

“Two deployments to Iraq, one to Kuwait. I flew.”

“Thank you for your service,” Bucky says, saluting.

“And yours, Sergeant,” Sam replies, one side of his mouth turning up in a smile. “Now you quit distractin’ me. I know Wand– _Scarlet_ already talked to you about a job, but I’m here to help with that. She can be a little strict, that one, but if you can find employment, and minimum wage is fine, in the next couple weeks, that would be great. Until then, you’ll have extra chores around the house, so you feel like you’re contributing. Chore wheels are in the kitchen. You cook?”

“Nope.”

“Good, you’re on bathrooms. Laundry, too, since the machine in the basement’s stopped working.”

“I’m gonna puke just thinking about it,” Bucky groans.

“And that’s different from the last two weeks how...?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, a playful note in his voice as he collapses back onto his bed with a _humph._

“No, thanks,” Sam grins, cheeky as hell. Bucky really doesn’t mind this guy.

“Anything else?” Bucky asks.

“Nah, man,” Sam says, getting up to leave. “We just want to see you get back on your feet, that’s all. You just worry about getting clean.” He taps on the door, as if in farewell, and slips out of the darkened room. Another three pamphlets – one on Narcotics Anonymous, one on job search for addicts, and one on mental health – have been left on his bedside table. He waits a minute, to make sure Sam doesn’t pop up again to say something he’s forgotten, and then picks up the pamphlets and starts to read.

\---

Bucky manages to come back downstairs around noon. Everyone in the house who works a night shift is hanging out – the rest of them are out and about, at work or running errands or fulfilling community service hours. Bucky’s finally added them all up: there’s Thor, who towers over everyone, and his even more unsettling brother, Loki; pleasantly nerdy Dr. Bruce Banner; Clint “Hawkeye” Barton; happy (read: intimidating) couple Vision and Scarlet; Scott Lang, a pest exterminator; Jessica Jones who can almost never be seen slinking around the house; Sam Wilson; actual teenager Peter Parker whose Aunt May thinks he’s off studying abroad in Germany; Rhodes, another vet (the pattern isn’t lost on Bucky) who was sent here by Stark personally; a guy named Wade Wilson who pulled some Breaking Bad bullshit when he got diagnosed and spends half the nights at his girlfriend’s house; Steve, of course; and himself. That makes fifteen. Sixteen, if you count the dog, who’s quickly developed into Bucky’s most trusted ally in the house, readily taking bits of bacon or chicken out of Bucky’s hand.

As Bucky ambles into the kitchen, there’s a knock at the door, which Thor proceeds to open to reveal a gorgeous woman in a sharp black-and-white pantsuit with very short black hair, her Blackberry in one hand and a Starbucks iced coffee in the other. She lifts her sunglasses from her face onto the top of her head as she enters, and her lipgloss is an iced pale pink. Bucky thinks she looks like a movie star.

“Maria!” Dr. Banner practically yelps, getting up from the couch. “Pleasure to see you, ma’am.”

“Bruce,” she greets, smiling at him. “How’s everyone doing today?”

“Doing well, Maria, and yourself?” Vision responds as he practically floats down the stairs at the sound of her voice. Thor continues to smile at her hugely from where he’s still propping open the front door.

“Oh, fine, fine,” she says, rifling through her black shoulder bag for some papers. She moves with purpose, like she’s got places to be and people to see. “The docket was a little slow today, though. Well, you know how Judge Connors can be. It was a whole thing. I got Dr. Erskine’s sentence down from four years to two, though, and Norrin Radd got probation, which I really didn’t think I’d be able to swing. Oh!” she exclaims, finally noticing Bucky. “And who are you?” Maria chatters, finding whichever papers she was looking for and setting them on the counter as she drifts toward the fridge.

Bucky coughs. “Er, hi. I’m James, but everyone calls me Bucky.” He offers his hand, which she takes in both of her manicured ones.

“Oh, _Bucky_ , yes. Steve was telling me about you – the veteran, right? Good for you, Bucky, I really do prefer meeting you all _outside_ the courthouse. I’m Maria Hill, the Public Defender for the county. Defended half the people in this house, now that I think about it.” She laughs heartily, her heels clicking as she moves about the kitchen, finally swinging the fridge open and grabbing herself a soda. Bucky just ogles the scene as the men dote and fawn on her; she’s got three documents for them to sign and a Notice of Hearing Review date for Clint’s jurisdiction over his kids, but by the looks of it, you’d think she was just an old friend coming over for a visit.

This place gets weirder by the second.

\---

Later that night, Bucky finds himself sitting awkwardly on one of the love seats, mostly ignoring the playful banter going on around him as he realizes he has no money, no hobbies, no job, and literally nothing to do but feel unwell and wait; it makes him feel out of place, even amongst these fellow recovering people with similar stories, and thinking about going to his first N.A. meeting in the morning has his stomach in a different kind of twist than the nausea he’s been fighting for the past two weeks.

Although he didn’t even realize his own anxiety, there is a relief that seeps through him when he notices Steve outside jiggling his key into the front door with one hand and juggling something with his other. Tension rolls right out of his shoulders. He hates to admit that it suddenly feels like he was waiting for Steve to come home. Back, he corrects. For Steve to come back.

When Steve walks through the front door, though, Bucky’s not the only one who stirs. The housemates practically stand at attention. Steve always brings a certain charisma to the room; when he’s around, they listen. They don’t talk with their mouths full and watch their language (though nothing can be done about Clint’s sailor mouth, Steve or no Steve). It’s like he inspires something in them, a contagious righteousness that Steve bleeds when he enters a room. Like a captain, or something.

Yes. Exactly like a Captain.

Tonight, Steve brings pizza – eight boxes, these people are animals – and there’s a lot of action for a few minutes as they gather their plates and find their seats and stuff huge pieces into their mouths. Loki comes in late from his Home Depot shift and signs the curfew slip on the back of the door. Those who worked during the day are asked how their shifts went, and those who are to work in the night eat hurriedly so they can jump into the shared van and begin the night’s drop-offs. Steve’s running quite the well-oiled machine.

Steve sits next to Bucky on the love seat – admittedly the only open seat in the living room, since Bucky’s green as could be – chomping away at a heaping pile of meat-lover’s pizza with absolutely zero shame, which Bucky admittedly likes about the guy. Shame is a wasted emotion, his dad used to tell him. And now that he’s full of it, drowning in shame every time he sees the needle marks running down his arm, shamelessness is an attractive feature. Perhaps even envious. Like they say, you always want what you can’t have.

Bucky sips his tea beside him and gnaws on the occasional saltine – today was actually a good stomach day, but not quite good enough for meat lovers’ pizza. There’s a comfort in sitting next to someone, knees knocking, and the various anxieties of the day – from Scarlet’s threat to Sam’s prying to the unsettling entrance of the strangely cordial Public Defender – roll away, and he can breathe again. It feels intentional, too, like Steve’s taken a protective role with him, though he imagines he does this for all the new intakes. Bucky can’t deny that he likes having someone care if you come home or not, someone answering the cry for help that was each and every needle he stuck in his arm in the last year.

Steve just has a way of being the shield that Bucky needs right now – the wall between the temptations and the ugliness that lets him catch his breath in its shadow. When Steve’s here, Bucky doesn’t feel the pressure to talk to the others or make stupid jokes. Steve provides him a moment to collect himself again, pull himself together. As stupid as it is, it’s like telling the teacher when the bully comes out on the playground. When Steve’s around, no one expects Bucky to open up or be vulnerable, like they do when they single him off and catch him off guard. No one pushes him to get a job or dig up his war-torn emotions or smile when he doesn’t feel like goddamn smiling. And the weird part is that it’s all nonverbal.

It’s just obvious that Steve cares. Whether he’s stepping over Bucky’s tangled legs on the bathroom floor to rub his back as Bucky gets sick for the umpteenth time, or making sure to ask Bucky what he likes on his pizza before he orders, even though he knows Bucky doesn’t have the stomach for Detroit-style pizza right now, the thoughtfulness of it all is almost heartbreaking.

Bucky knows he’s vulnerable right now. He _knows_ it. He knows that someone fucking asking how his day was is enough to make him jizz in his goddamn pants. He knows it’s pathetic that the bear minimum of human kindness and respect makes him want to cry.

But somehow, despite the fact that he _knows_ all of this, he can’t help feeling what he’s feeling.

He’s got a goddamn crush on the man taking care of his heroin addiction. C'mon. The dude is a _volunteer firefighter_ for crying out loud.

So he sips his tea, enjoys the knees knocking, and chooses to keep his mouth shut.

\---

He gets it, honest, he does. He gets _why_ he needs a job. It’s the _how_ that he’s having a tough time with. He hasn’t put together a resumé in at least six years, and when Clint offers to help him make one, it’s disappointing as hell. He’s done three things in his life: dropped out of college, joined the army, and left the army. Oh, and then got addicted to heroin. So, four things.

Clint’s help is actually priceless; he knows of all the joints in town that like to help the kind of people that stay with Steve get back on their feet – a few guys and gals who know what it’s like to crawl your way back to life and want to offer people like Bucky a second chance. Vision and Scarlet help on a CSA farm three days a week whose owner actually lost their son to a heroin O.D. Home Depot has taken in a few of Steve’s guys; the manager did a year for aggravated assault. Detroit’s a city that’s seen some shit, but you can’t say it’s not forgiving.

Conveniently, the one shared computer of the house – a halfway ancient laptop – lives in Clint’s room (he did, after all, purchase it with some of his leftover spending money), and the two of them sit hunched together, faces cast in the screen’s blue-ish light, at three in the morning, scrolling for job opportunities for Bucky.

 _You could be a server,_ Clint signs, seeming to prefer not to speak when he doesn’t have to.

“Right, and balance all those dishes with just one arm? Hold a pen and a notepad at the same time?” Bucky replies sarcastically out loud, shaking his head.

_A fireman?_

“PTSD.”

_Are you good with your hands?_

“Clint Barton!” Bucky faux-gasps, feigning offense at a come-on and bringing his hand dramatically to his heart. Clint is the person he feels most comfortable with in this house next to Steve.

 _You know what I mean._ Clint rolls his eyes and smacks the back of Bucky’s head playfully. “

Yeah, yeah I was in engineering back in the day. Mechanical-like. I’m good at buildin’ stuff.”

Clint points to the screen, to the job offer that reads _HIRING MECHANIC –– COLSON’S AUTO PARTS –– HANDS-ON, MUST HAVE EXPERIENCE._

Bucky shrugs, reaching for his soda (or “pop” as the Detroiters would say, much to his chagrin). But he writes the phone number down on the napkin in front of him and circles it.

“How come you don’t get a job?” Bucky asks, suddenly confused.

I’m deaf.

“No, you’re not,” Bucky laughs, thinking of all the times Clint has seemed to understand exactly what Steve and the others were saying.

_Okay, I have selective hearing and I hate people. You do the math._

Bucky knocks him with his shoulder playfully at that, appreciating the comfort of having something like a friend.

 

Bucky later discovers that Barton is actually collecting Disability and going to outpatient rehab four days a week. He also finds out through Thor (because Clint would never tell him this himself) that he lost his hearing in the meth lab explosion that initiated the petition to take away his parental rights.

To Bucky, Clint’s such a dad figure, with his gelled spiky hair, big nose, and general softness, that it’s hard to wrap his head around Clint being _Hawkeye_ , notorious armed robber and the lone survivor of a meth lab explosion in the basement of a house in Ypsilanti.

Although there’s a lot of good going on in this place, Bucky realizes there simply aren’t enough windows in Steve’s house to chase all of the darkness away.

\---

He’s sleeping well enough now that he actually gets some REM sleep. Which means dreams. Which means nightmares.

Two days after pizza night, Bucky lurches awake with a scream halfway out of his mouth at four in the morning.

And there’s Steve, filling the crack in the door.

“Sorry, sorry, I just heard, I wanted to check–”

“Thanks,” Bucky says sincerely, his breath coming back to normal.

“Sure,” Steve says, looking almost guilty. “You gonna be alright?”

“Good as new.”

“Alright,” Steve says, looking befuddled in his pajama pants. There’s something endearing about him, with his hair ruffled from sleep. He looks like he wants to say more, but the moment is gone, and he just repeats, “Alright,” and taps the door before closing it behind him.

\---

With a bit of luck and an uncanny ability to call up the ghost of his old charm when he needs it most, Bucky gets the job as the mechanic. Turns out that though his memory might’ve gone to shit, and the equations and terminology have long since left him, Bucky’s muscle memory is crystal clear. His hand works incredibly quickly, turning wrenches, checking oils, lifting cars and lowering them back down as sweat and grease accumulate on those hot Michigan days; despite his handicap, he keeps pace with his coworkers just fine, and for that, the boss adores him.

He really couldn’t be much luckier; he’s landed a nine to five, _with benefits_ , and the boss has got a soft spot for him – apparently Phil Colson, son of the original owner, is a registered sex offender. Got in a lot of trouble for watching stuff he wasn’t supposed to, but never laid a hand on anyone. From the whisperings of the other mechanics on the line, Bucky gathers that Colson paid a hefty price for his crimes and cleaned up his act and his addiction. Although many would call him a sick bastard, Bucky’s got a kind of respect for the guy – newfound respect for those who believe in second chances.

As five o’ clock rolls around, Bucky reaches habitually into his back pocket for his pack of cigarettes: the last guilty pleasure he has. With a special kind of one-handed grace, he lights the cigarette in his mouth with a practiced flick, one leg bent back against the auto garage as he leans against the graffiti’d back wall. His long hair’s grown on him (literally, he thinks, laughing quietly to himself), but it gets in the way at the shop, so he’s tied it up with one of Scarlet’s hair tie thingies. He likes it in the little bun – it lets him feel that occasional Detroit breeze, the one that stops everyone in their tracks, young and old, to enjoy the momentary bliss.

He enjoys the slight nicotine rush as he waits routinely for Steve to pick him up. Working in the outskirts of the city, near Warren, puts him out of almost everyone’s way at the halfway house, so Steve takes him out there and picks him up personally.

Again, he’s sure he would do the same thing for anyone.

Okay, he’s pretty sure.

When Steve’s Jeep pulls up, Bucky can’t help but crack a smile and stub his cigarette out against the wall, lumbering over. He’s got almost no possessions, walking with a only his new burner phone in his pocket and the rolled up brown paper lunch bag that he’ll reuse for tomorrow crumpled up in his right hand. But it doesn’t matter – the sun is dipping beneath the horizon with a reddish-pink glow, Steve is handsome as usual with a fresh haircut (he notices) and a tight-fitting white T-shirt and the look of concern that never quite leaves his eyes, work is over and Bucky’s limbs can finally rest. He can feel the labor of the day pulsing through them as he opens the passenger door and hops in, throwing his head back and closing his eyes in exhaustion.

“Long day?” Steve smirks, taking in Bucky’s limp, sweaty body. God, he must smell like death – and this is his second day in a row wearing the same tank top. His dog tags make small _clanging_ noises as he readjusts to put his seatbelt on. He considers giving Steve the bird.

“Longest of my life,” Bucky says instead, still leaning his head back against the headrest in a show of his exhaustion.

“I have a little trouble believing that,” Steve laughs, shifting gears as they rumble off down the road. Bucky is briefly jarred by a pothole. God, so many potholes in this Godforsaken state.

“Foooooood,” Bucky moans from the passenger seat.

“Yeah, yeah. Growin’ boys, am I right?” Steve teases. “Vision and Bruce are on dinner tonight. I heard rumblings of meatloaf, but no promises.”

Bucky’s stomach flips. Oh joy. Meatloaf.

They get on the highway, and Steve drives the speed limit to a T. Not one mile over, not one under. At one point, that might’ve annoyed Bucky, when he was accustomed to the fast pace and ubiquitous need to _get somewhere_ of New York. Now, he doesn’t mind so much. The winding forty minute drive is a welcome part of his routine.

“You’re awfully quiet today, Buck. Everything alright?” Steve finally says after a few glances at Bucky through the rearview mirror.

“Aw, Stevie, you gettin’ worried about me?” Bucky says, opening one eye to see Steve’s expression.

“No, I was just... No. No, I ain’t worried,” Steve responds, awkward and defensive.

Bucky raises his eyebrows at that. “You know I’m just pullin’ your leg, man. Right?”

Steve laughs, awkward again. “Totally. Ha.”

It gets quiet for a moment. Bucky closes his eyes again.

“We’ve got thirty more minutes, don’t you dare fall asleep on me, Barnes,” Steve breaks the silence again, driving with one hand and the windows rolled down. “Should we play some music?”

“Depends on what you like,” Bucky replies, realizing they’ve never listened to music on any of their drives thus far. Usually he’s jabbering off about some story or another to fill the long rides, much to Steve’s amusement if his booming laughter has been anything to go by.

“I’m into oldies,” Steve admits. “Not everyone’s cup of tea.”

“No, no, I like that stuff. Beatles and Hendrix and all that.”

Steve actually blushes in the front seat. “Well, not quite like that. More like, uh, 1930s, 40s era. You know, Ella Fitzgerald and Dean Martin? Mills Brothers? No?”

Bucky stares at him, astonished. “That might be the cutest thing I’ve ever heard,” Bucky finally says, the words practically falling out of his mouth as he grins hugely. Steve’s got his attention – he sits up in his seat. “Play something for me. I’m curious now.”

Steve glances at Bucky, as if to read if Bucky is actually serious, which he quite plainly is. With an almost imperceptible shrug and _another_ nervous glance at Bucky, he switches from FM radio to CD, and the track hitches, and then Ella Fitzgerald’s “Summertime” is rolling deeply through the speakers, through the frame of the car, through Bucky’s very bones.

And then, Jesus H. Christ, Steve is _singing_. Slow and deep, a little off-key but rumbling right along with Ella. It’s like he forgets that Bucky’s in the car – he’s shaking his head, smooth and slow-like, to the rhythm, immersed in the music that contrasts so starkly with the sea of traffic and honking around them. Although Bucky’s admittedly missed the last year’s Top 40s, he’s certain that he’s never met anyone who was listening to this kind of stuff. He finds himself unable to stop smiling as Steve enters into a zone of his own. “Blue Skies” comes on next, and if Bucky didn’t know Steve’s feet were operating a vehicle, he’d think he was tapping his feet.

Michigan stays light outside absurdly late, but when they finally pull into the driveway and carport built out of PVC pipes by Loki last spring, darkness is beginning to creep into the night.

“Sorry,” Steve laughs, embarrassed as they climb out of the forest green Jeep, listening to the familiar double-beep that indicates a locked car. “I got sort of carried away in there.”

“No, no,” Bucky says, seriously, stopping Steve with a hand to his shoulder (surprising himself). But he wants Steve to know this, to hear it seriously. “Most guys our age never light up like that, Steve. I haven’t seen someone have that much fun in their own world in a real long time. Never lose that, Rogers. You hear me?”

Steve looks taken aback, probably not expecting anything serious from the quiet, sarcastic smackhead he’s only known for a little under a month.

“Y-yeah,” Steve says, nodding, confused. His eyes move to Bucky’s hand on his shoulder; Bucky retracts it immediately, feeling unlike himself.

It’s just...he wants...

No. _No_ he thinks to himself harshly as they turn to walk into the house, Bucky a half a step behind Steve’s long strides. _Steve is off limits. You’re just attention-starved and depressed. He is not available. You’re lonely, Barnes, get over yourself. And Jesus, stop chubbing, this is the family room. Christ._

“Are you sure you do not have hunger?” Thor asks in the accent that Bucky still can’t place as Bucky opts out of meatloaf for the night.

“Yeah, yeah I’m sure,” Bucky says, forcing a smile and turning down the hallway to his room. He has some feelings to take care of. And an erection. Dammit.

\---

The car rides to and from work quickly become Bucky’s favorite part of the week. Not that morning N.A. meetings or the daily chores or the sessions where Sam puts on his Therapist hat aren’t fun, but. He likes the car rides, and talking to Steve.

After that first Thai date (Bucky cringes calling it that), they rarely talk about drugs. It seems that between rehab, meetings, religious observances, therapy, and sometimes court, the housemates spend more than enough time reflecting on their life’s mistakes.

Instead, they cover everything else. Cats or dogs, hot dogs or hamburgers? They talk politics endlessly, Steve fuming about the current state of affairs, which surprises Bucky. The patriotic rule-follower with WWII posters in his room is as liberal as they come and incredibly heated about issues of class and racial equality. He finds out lots of things about Steve, really. He’s got terrible road rage but calls the other drivers names like “bozo” and “geezer,” instead of Bucky’s choice of “motherfucker” or “asshat.” Dodge, Steve’s dog, is actually a rescue and a registered therapy dog, who Sam brings to the VA sometimes. They talk about their families; Steve never knew his father, it seems, and they both empathize over the loss of their mothers, though Bucky does know his father and little sister. He confides to Steve that he hasn’t talked to them in months – they probably don’t even know where he is.

Steve asks about Natasha, if she and Bucky ever dated. Bucky laughs at that, musing about how simultaneously lovely and unpalatable Natasha can be, and how if he ever got between her legs she’d probably use her thighs to put him in a chokehold. He divulges that Natasha works for the government, something secretive that she could never talk about. He’s always held out for CIA. They’ve been best friends since high school, much like Sam and Steve have, Bucky comes to learn.

The thing that kills him is just how easy it is to talk to Steve. When there are fifteen people all clambering in the kitchen to eat, with forks scraping and chairs moving in and out and Dodge barking, anxiety pins Bucky uncharacteristically to his seat and shuts his mouth. Between the war and the heroin, he’s become the last thing his high school teachers could have possibly expected: an introvert. But when he’s one on one with Steve like this, it just pours out of him. They laugh unrepentantly. What was that Carl Sandburg line? _Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth, half-naked, sweating//_

Yeesh. Something like that.

It’s true, though. It’s embarrassingly, frustratingly true. Bucky’s fallen hard, and every ride home, he wishes for a left hand that would rest so easily on Steve’s as it works the stick shift, taunting him.


	3. Chapter 3

Nearly the whole house is packed into the living room on its assorted and mismatched couches and recliners and bean bag chairs, enjoying Taco Tuesday courtesy of Clint and Scarlet. The Parker kid (who still makes Bucky uncomfortable, considering he’s like, 15) has just ripped ass and everyone’s laughing at him and blaming the cooks and their piles of refried beans, when there’s a frenzied pounding on the front door.

Before anyone even moves to open the door, he gets a sinking feeling. Sinner’s intuition.

“James Buchanan Barnes!” yells a fuming female voice, confirming what his gut already told him. “I know you’re in there and I’m gonna _freaking kill you!_ ” All eyes swerve to Bucky, who’s frozen with half a fish taco in his mouth, wide eyes conveying his surprise. Nobody moves for a long time. The pounding picks up again.

“Oi, Barnes,” Scarlet says, smirking. “I think someone’s looking for you.” The room half bursts out in laughter while the other half share uncertain sideways glances. Loki actually grimaces. Jessica slinks upstairs, unnoticed by all but Bucky. Steve looks...almost sad that someone’s here for Bucky, as if someone could take him away.

A too-long pause ensues, until the door rattles again and Thor throws an elbow into Bucky’s ribcage, bringing him back from his reverie. The unintelligible crying and yelling starts up again on the other side of the front door. Bucky’s nerves are tingling – what if it’s the police?

“ _Dude_ ,” Peter urges.

Bucky moves robotically to the door, mind reeling over all the women he might’ve pissed off in the last year or so; frighteningly, he’s not even sure of his last sexual encounter. The FBI wouldn’t be this frantic, would they?

_Would they???_

Behind him, he knows the rest of the house is all ogling him with bated breath, and he mumbles to himself about having to have an audience for this. He wants Steve to like him, not see him get bitch-slapped, or worse, arrested. He takes a steadying breath that feels like his last, unlocks the door...and is promptly jumped by a small but powerful mass of dark curls and sharp fingernails. She’s half-heartedly punching him as she calls him a string of profane names and ultimately wraps her skinny arms around his neck, ugly-crying into his chest, her face buried so that Bucky can’t quite be sure who is passionately clinging to him while also trying to...fight him?

What?

“You _stupid fucking moron._ Oh, Bucky,” she sobs, hiccuping. A sudden sense of comprehension dawns on him, and his eyes flood with tears.

“Sis?” Bucky says, but it sounds like a question, his brain taking a minute to catch up. “Jesus Christ, Becca,” he breathes now, no longer stunned as he finally wraps his arm around her, buries his face in her neck, ugly Barnes tears mixing against their cheeks. “Shit. Becca. _Becca_.” He starts to cry, grabbing for her with everything he has, not knowing until she was already in his arms how badly he needed to see her, that he still has a family. A tangible, blood family with skin and bones that he can touch and hold and sob against.

\---

When Becca and Bucky finally calm enough, Bucky brings her inside nervously. Steve appears to be relieved when Bucky introduces Becca to the housemates as his little sister; the rest of the house just seems glad that their surprise guest is not in uniform. Not that they’re not all clean and up to code, but. Old grievances die hard.

She’s tiny – only five feet tall – with olive skin and dark brown curls that fall in chocolatey rivulets around a heart-shaped face. Beautiful, is the word Bucky would use. She’s got a rock on her finger ( _I’ve got a brother-in-law,_ Bucky thinks) and turns down numerous taco offers as her eyes continue to flit to Bucky, as if making sure he doesn’t leave her again. They’ve got the exact same gray-blue eyes, Bucky realizes. Remembers, really. It’s just been so long.

Finally, after a chorus of introductions and both of them have cried in the living room, the siblings escape and go for a walk, longing to be alone. Bucky’s in his usual jeans and white T-shirt with his hand shoved deep in his pocket. Becca looks like she’s been through the ringer, in tattered, paint-stained leggings and a maroon sweatshirt that should have hit the donation bin six washes ago, though perhaps it’s the circles under her eyes that give her away. The neighborhood’s very green, even at this tail end of summer, and the lightning bugs are just starting to come out.

“I thought you were dead,” Becca confides, her arm looped around her brother’s as they walk real slow down the sidewalk. Weeds grow up through the cracks.

“Does no one beat around the bush these days?” he admonishes like an old man.

“Watch yourself. I’m still mad at you, Buck,” she warns, looking up at him. He looks away.

“I know.”

“Why the hell are you in Detroit?”

“You want the long answer or the short one?” he asks.

She glares at him. “The truth would be nice,” she says flatly.

“Okay, okay,” he agrees, eyes downcast and a frown turning his mouth at the corners. “You know, when I came back from the war, I was different. The amputation was a thing to get used to, of course. And then the memory loss and the headaches, and then the PTSD, but we all got that, who’m I kidding? I know you were doing what you could for me, when I came home. I– before I go any further, I want you to know that I don’t blame you. Not one bit, you hear me? That’s important.” He looks at her sternly, waiting for an answer. She gives a small nod, teary again, but it satisfies him, so he continues, telling her the same thing he told Steve: that he’s a veteran Opioid poster boy who royally fucked up who has somehow ended up owing his life to none other than Natasha Romanov. He tells her he’s been camping out at the halfway house since she left him on the doorstep in June; it suddenly dawns on him that it’s nearing September.

“Since...June?” Becca says, offended. “I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Bucky tries, guilt rising in his stomach. “I’m so sorry Becca.”

They have to stop walking, she’s crying so hard.

“I–I thought. You d-d-didn’t come home. You missed Thanksgiving at Nana’s and-and Hanukkah, and the cousins were asking about you, at Passover, t-th-they wanted you to hide the _Afikoman_ like always, and it’s been so h-hard since Mom died, I c-couldn’t lose you t-too.”

“Shhh,” Bucky soothes, or at least attempts. It doesn’t stop her trembling. “I’m so sorry.” He knows it’s pathetic. He knows she has every right to be furious and kick him in his selfish balls. He knows he’s a piece of shit. But what else can he offer her but an empty apology?

“I know, I _know_ you’re here. You’re alive, I shouldn’t be crying like this, I–” she says, wiping her tears with the sleeves of her oversized sweatshirt that run past her hands.

Bucky goes to wipe her cheeks with his fingertips, understanding. “I’m doing real good now, Becks. Real good. They got me going to these NA meetings, even some therapy,” he knows his face goes sour on the word, “I got a job now, with benefits, too – they’re gonna help me get a new arm and everything. I’m really getting better.”

It’s as if she doesn’t hear him. “I had my Google alerts on in case – in case you ended up in the obituaries, Buck. You know how Brooklyn is. Ain’t no one gonna try to identify a dead junkie. You could’ve been anywhere. We – Dad and I – we called the jail every week, just hoping you’d turn up. I can’t believe...” She puts a small hand on his cheek and leaves it there, drinking him in as her eyes fill with tears. They spill over onto her cheeks, and it’s hard to watch. He knew he’d caused his family pain, but this? This is destroying him. “Oh, Buck, I am so m-mad at you. Won’t you come home?”

Bucky sighs. How can he tell her that he’s not ready? That Brooklyn is everything he is and everything he needs to be away from at the same time?

“Becca,” he starts solemnly, and he doesn’t have to go any further for her to realize the _no_ in his tone.

“You’re not coming back.” It’s a statement.

“I can’t.”

“Bucky, Brooklyn is _home_. We’re your _family_. We need you back. Dad needs you. Even Antoinette misses you.” She’s pleading with him, using their ancient cat as leverage for God’s sake.

“Becca. Becca, listen,” he slows, stopping them again in front of a mailbox. “I’m gonna come back. I’m gonna come back to see you, and Pops, and Antoinette. But this place? This place is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. This is my one shot, Rebecca. This is it. I’ve got to get better. I’m...I’m fragile, right now.” He internally thanks Sam for that Therapy Word. But it’s true. He _is_ fragile, and he’s made too much progress to throw it all away. He feels like a ponderosa, growing taller and stronger by the day, but the pine needles gathering at his feet remind him that he’s still an unlit torch.

Becca calms down, and they circle the neighborhood once more before getting back to the house. Bucky tries to change the subject, asking about her fiancé, a guy named Caleb Rosenberg, and the wedding; he asks about their dad’s health, even about the cat, and the bodega across the street with whose owners they were always friendly. When they finally move through the front door, the housemates have scattered, either out of awkwardness or respect for Bucky’s privacy – but either way, he’s grateful not to come back to a dozen pairs of eyes. With his good shoulder pressed against the hard bedroom floor and Becca falling tiredly to sleep in his bed, Bucky lies awake long into the night, wondering if he’s made the right choice. Not that he has long to think on it, though – Becca leaves first thing in the morning, passing on the cup of coffee he offers her and telling him she’ll pick one up on the road.

He respects her anger. They hug once before she’s off, promising to pull over on the side of the road if she gets tired, not to text and drive, to wear her seatbelt, to stay caffeinated. But he knows she’s just placating him – he lost the right to give big brotherly advice a long time ago. He's sure he'll be digesting all of this with Sam in the basement sooner than he likes.

Just as she’s climbing into the front seat and pushing it forward a ridiculous amount so her feet can reach the pedals – something he would have teased her for if he wasn’t in such deep shit – he realizes something.

“Wait, Becca. How did you know I was here?”

She actually laughs at that, a tinkering little laugh. “Bro, you really haven’t figured it out yet?” She rolls her eyes, another little giggle escaping her lips. “Boys,” she huffs, then settles, looks at him with those disappointed eyes and a sad smile, and rolls her windows up.

As she drives away, she seems to have one last thought, rolling her window once more and yelling out, “Call Nat! She deserves to know you’re alive, too!” and drives off, with Bucky waving one-handedly on the curb in his pajamas, utterly lost.

\----

Becca’s visit has given a whole new meaning to his recovery. He works overtime, pays his dues to the house pool, and even opens a savings account. A phone call to Tony Stark (in which he spends most of the time thinking _holy shit I am talking to **the** Tony Stark_ ) shows promise for finally getting a prosthetic arm – they set a consultation for November. Instead of sitting in the back and playing with loose strings coming off his shirts, he starts talking during NA meetings. He shares that he has to leave the room whenever Scott and Sam sit down to watch _Grey’s Anatomy_ because every time they mention morphine it makes his skin prickle. When he spends an hour cowering behind the dumpster at work because the car he was working on accidentally backfired and sent him spiraling back to hot deserts and sniper rifles, he tells Sam about it during one of their Sunday morning sessions.

He puts weight on ( _You’re fattening me up for slaughter, aren’t you, Rogers?_ he scolds when Steve brings home Burger King again), and then puts muscle on, going to the gym with Thor (who out-benches him without fail every fucking time).

He even takes his sister’s advice and looks up Natasha in the phone book, who answers, “It’s Natasha, the fuck are you?”

“Hey, Nat. It’s, uh, Bucky.”

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU FUCKING FUCK WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL ME SOONER?!”

He knows it’s her way of saying _I love you and I’m so glad you’re safe_ , and he practically whistles the rest of the day. Turns out, Natasha’s super-secret government position actually puts her in some undisclosed amount of contact with Tony Stark himself, which is how she heard about this halfway house in the first place. The puzzle pieces slowly start falling into place. He makes sure to thank her, albeit begrudgingly, for saving his life. As much as the initial shock was a punch to the gut, he can’t deny that he’s _sort of_ grateful she dumped his doped-up ass on a crumbling Detroit stoop, and he misses her like hell.

He promises to call her again soon.

Bucky starts taking Dodge on walks in the evenings when he has a smoke, which balances out Steve’s ritualistic morning runs with him. Steve is a morning person to a fault – Bucky can’t remember the last time he woke up and coffee wasn’t already made. It’s something he could get used to.

The chores are a nightmare, but they keep him busy. Cleaning a bathroom used by eight different people has definitely taught him things he never needed to know, like the difference between a pube and a neckbeard hair and how much toilet paper the American people must go through in a year. He listens to books on tape as he cleans, though, and finds himself in daring, far-off places, post-apocalyptic and dystopian worlds, full of aliens and robots and surprisingly capable human teenagers who seem to be at the center of it all. Sam tells him sci-fi is a great way of indirectly coping with his mixed-bag of emotions about the war, but Bucky brushes that away – this is escapism in its purest form. Wade makes fun of him for it, often appearing while Bucky’s cleaning to talk over the audio book and narrate himself; it’s always lewd and always makes Bucky chuckle before rewinding to catch what he missed. Really, he devours the books, catching up to this decade. _Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, The Martian_. Peter, tech-savvy and almost annoyingly helpful, recovers some nice bluetooth headphones for Bucky and starts illegally downloading books from his school library for him.

That’s what the place is all about; creating a kinder, smaller microcosm of people just trying to get through this life. Bucky’s almost surprised at how smoothly it all works, with the meals ready like clockwork, the chores finished, making ends meet each month with a smile to boot. It all seems too good to be true.

And that’s because it is.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s late on an unassuming Wednesday night in late September, and the meal schedule is marked FFY – Fend For Yourself – so Vision and Scarlet have gone out to a nice Italian place for their anniversary (everyone groans knowing they’ll have to listen to the creaking of their bed later), and the rest of them are working on some assortment of leftovers, takeout, TV dinners or fast food. Gloomy skies drape overhead, threatening rain, and the typical commotion from the living room is absent without its usual promise of food. Peter’s alone at the dining room table, busily using Google Translate to complete his Spanish homework, but the house otherwise feels eerily empty.

Late into the evening, Bucky and Steve return from Five Guys, grease still congealing on their fingertips. It’d been a fun dinner – Steve’s suggestion – and they got free fries when the staff messed up Steve’s order (which he didn’t even complain about because Jesus fucking Christ the man doesn’t do anything wrong). It’s actually something Bucky loves about Steve, though; he treats everyone the same – talks to billionaire Tony Stark with the same gallantry and politeness as the 16-year-old behind the counter who messed up his burger. He thinks about how his mom would’ve liked Steve, and it makes him ache; he can hear her voice now: “Oh Bucky, why couldn’t you bring home a Nice Jewish Boy? Well, this one’ll have to do.” Of course, he never got the chance to come out to his mom and can never be sure how she would’ve taken the whole “bisexual” thing. But he likes to think she would’ve been okay with it. After all, she used to tell him and his sister that shame was a wasted emotion.

As Bucky muses, Steve hums, hips swaying unfairly, his broad shoulders practically filling the doorway as he searches for his keys. Nature joins in with an orchestra of crickets, cicadas, and one particularly baritone bullfrog. It leaves Bucky feeling warm as Steve finally turns the lock and they move into the foyer, shoulder to shoulder.

Immediately, Bucky knows something is wrong. The living room was practically void of people when they left forty-five minutes ago, and now every single housemate is crowded in, staring at them somberly. Taking in the long faces and clasped hands, Bucky scans the room, confused. Even Wade Wilson looks depressed. No one is talking. What the hell is going on?

“What the hell is going on?” Steve asks sharply. Great minds think alike, buddy.

Sam, assuming his leadership role as second in command, stands up and faces Steve.

“Clint’s not back yet,” Sam says seriously, his voice dropping an octave. His brown eyes are completely emotionless; for once, Bucky can’t read them at all.

Steve looks at his watch, reminding Bucky subtly of a cartoon character. “Curfew was twenty minutes ago.” “

Exactly,” Sam responds, raising his eyebrows.

“His PO...Damn it. _Damn it_. Anyone know where he is? Where he was last?” Steve’s heated now, an actual angry blush creeping up his neck. His veins start to show.

“He was supposed to drug test today,” Scarlet supplies. “That’s all I know.” Vision takes her hand, squeezes it. She sighs heavily and brushes amber hair behind her ear. If Bucky’s not mistaken, her heavy eyeliner looks smudged.

“I haven’t seen him since last night,” Banner says nervously from somewhere in the back. “Did anyone check in with him after his hearing?”

“He came home and went straight to his room,” Parker says in his pre-pubescent voice, looking stoked just to have some relevant piece of information.

“I can’t believe I didn’t check in with him after his hearing...was that on the calendar?” Steve says, naturally beating _himself_ up for this.

“Remember, Steven, it could be nothing. A missed bus would put him thirty-four minutes behind schedule,” Thor says meditatively, clearly trying to be a voice of reason as Steve gets more agitated.

“It’s not like him,” Steve argues, frustrated and pacing the room. He slams his fist on the flat part of the stairwell post. Bucky lingers back by the front door. There’s simply nothing for him to say.

“His phone’s dead, too,” Scarlet adds, looking sullen and now sitting all the way in Vision’s lap. “We tried it a few times.”

“Well, we have to find him. He’s one of our own,” Steve says authoritatively, and in that voice, Bucky would believe anything he said. He’d jump off the proverbial bridge if Steve asked him to.

Steve continues, commanding, “Night shift people, go to work. We can’t have you guys putting your employment on the line here.” Jessica, who works as a security guard, and Thor and Loki, who do overnight stocking at Home Depot, stand to leave with worried looks on their faces. Bucky can tell they don’t want to miss the action or be far from the updates. They exit the room quietly, forlorn. Distantly, Bucky hears the van’s engine rev.

“Everyone who feels well enough, we need to split up. If you’re at-risk, don’t go out tonight. There could be drugs, and Lord knows we don’t need another one of you to go missing. Fuck,” Steve huffs, and Bucky’s never heard him swear like that. Steve is almost scaring him.

Clint is, too. Steve’s right – it’s not like Clint to not be at the house. Clint’s whole schtick is that he’s _always_ there and they’ll never get rid of him. He thinks back to his first lucid morning here, when the walls and the sheets and the smells and the laughter were so foreign, and Clint made a point of making him feel welcome. Second to Steve, Clint’s easily Bucky’s favorite housemate.

 _Fuck_ is right.

Vision and Scarlet’s anniversary plans are ruined, and they’re sent to the Detroit River to futilely call Clint’s name into the September night. Scott and Wade are assigned to check out the bars in Midtown – all of Hawkeye’s favorite haunts. Peter Parker, eager to help but still a kid in everyone’s eyes, gets charged with calling all the hospitals and Urgent Cares in the area to see if Clint’s been admitted. Sam goes to the jail. Dr. Banner drives out to Royal Oak to pay Clint’s ex-wife a visit. Rhodes is at the center of it all, coordinating folks and staying up to alert everyone if Clint comes home. Bucky could even sweat he sees someone with a walkie talkie.

Bucky is deemed too green to venture into the night; they don’t trust him to not be tempted by whatever he finds out there, which stings a little (a lot. It stings a lot.). Despite a fair amount of moaning and groaning that he could help, really, he could, he gets nothing but the cold shoulder from Steve, who’s suddenly defensive and protective.

“I can’t lose you, too,” he snaps, and Bucky’s heart skips a beat, though he can’t tell if he should or shouldn’t be pleased by being put on house arrest.

"I don't do that anymore," Bucky whispers to himself. Steve doesn't hear.

Regardless, Bucky stays, keeping tabs with both Col. Rhodes and Peter, who spend the better part of the next two hours making increasingly worried phone calls – a crescendo of desperation – in the yellow light of the lone lamp in the living room. Bucky tries to help, when he can. He grabs Clint’s laptop – it hurts a little to be in his bedroom – and searches phone numbers for Peter to call. He crosses off bars that Clint is not in as the texts come in. Scarlet calls once, to see if Clint’s returned, and when Peter delicately tells her no, Bucky could swear he hears a choking sound on the other end of the phone.

It’s a tense night. He brews coffee for the home base team and worries about Steve, who’d opted to go out alone to search some of the vacant houses nearby – a common place for addicts to ride out their highs. Bucky worries about him – the pulsing vein in his forehead, the determination in those blue eyes. Steve’s strong, no doubt, but Bucky doesn’t like the idea of him being alone out there very much. Steve’s best characteristics – the lengths he would go to protect his friends – make him dangerous. Bucky’s not sure the man knows when to stop.

The hours roll by. When the clock strikes midnight, there’s an obvious deflation from the team. Fewer phone calls come in. Peter runs out of hospitals, jails, and restaurants to phone. Bruce comes back from all the way in Royal Oak, his brown curls looking unkempt as he saunters through the door; no sign of Clint visiting his family and nothing on the local news. At one in the morning, Scarlet and Vision return. By 1:45 AM, most of the team is back, with Scott and Wade returning last, though of course, Steve’s still out there, relentless. They put him on speaker phone.

 _“Everyone just...just go to bed. Okay? We’ll try again in the morning. It’s gettin’ late. Thanks for...thanks. Yeah. ‘Night._ ” Steve hangs up anticlimactically, and they all share nervous looks before breaking off in two’s and three’s toward their respective bedrooms, giving up.

“You really ought to go to bed, Bucky,” Bruce tries, still looking disheveled. He puts a hand on Bucky’s bad shoulder, and it takes everything in him not to wince at the touch. He knows Banner means well, but he’s not exactly used to physical affection, let alone on the scars that keep him up at night. “There’s nothing more we can do for him now.” Bucky has to actively re-focus on what Bruce is saying. It takes a second.

“I know,” Bucky responds, sounding far more confident than he feels. The next words spill out of him before he’s even thought them through. “I’m just gonna wait up for Steve. He seems pretty torn up about it, and I don’t want him to be alone.”

“Good man,” Bruce says, a high compliment from the genius who gives so few. Bucky just nods, and when Banner turns to thump his way up the stairs, Bucky rubs his face in his hands, stressed and sweaty and bouncing his knees with the late-night caffeine.

 

An hour and a half later, there’s a sound at the door. It startles Bucky from where he’s been not-quite-dozing on the love seat, waiting up for Clint or Steve, whoever came first, and he jumps.

The sounds are sloppy, a stream of slurred speech from behind the door that he can’t quite make out, and uneven, unsteady bumps against the doorframe. It makes Bucky flinch, hesitate. Is this something he can watch? He’s sure now that it’s Clint on the other side of the door, garbling and swaying, and he’s gonna have his pupils blown, and he might be in some kind of bad shape, and he might have supplies on him, good stuff, stuff Bucky hasn’t had racing around his veins in months...

C’mon, Soldier. You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

(Sam really likes _The Help_.)

After what has only in reality been a few seconds, Bucky steps toward the door, where the jibberish is coming from. With his good hand on it, ready for whatever state he’s about to find Clint in, he undoes the latch, unlocks the door, and swings it open toward him.

And there’s Steve, drunk as a skunk, smiling guiltily at him as he leans precariously against the doorframe. At 3:30 in the morning. It’s an absolute wonder how he even made it back to the house – on foot, no less – and now Bucky’s the only one left awake to witness their fearless leader, stumbling and messy.

What the _fuck_?

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Bucky whispers harshly, not wanting to wake the others as he takes in Steve’s bloodshot eyes, goofy lop-sided grin, and the fact that he looks like he’s about to fall over. He has to be careful not to wake anyone. Steve has broken the very first rule on the list: no alcohol.

“Buck, BuckBuckBuck,” Steve mumbles, loudly, staring at Bucky like there’s three of him. Perhaps, from Steve’s perspective, there is. “L-let me _explain._ ” He reaches a hand toward Bucky, but he’s too far away to touch him.

“What got into you, punk?” Bucky whispers back, quickly reaching out to where Steve is leaning against the frame and pulling one beefy arm over his shoulder, trying to at least get Steve inside. Steve’s big enough that he could really use some help from the others, but he doesn’t want them seeing like this, both for Steve’s sake and their morale. “And whisper, Christ, you’ll wake the whole damn house.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry there were...shots,” is all Steve has to say, swaying on his legs that keep caving as Bucky tries to help him inside. “Want to – want to lay down.” Steve starts to slip off Bucky’s shoulder as he tries to lay down _here_ , on the kitchen floor.

“Ohhhh no you don’t, big guy. Nope, we’re gonna get all the way to the bathroom, then you can lay down.”

“Okay,” Steve whispers, utterly shit-faced, letting himself be ungracefully dragged to the bathroom. They have to stop twice for Bucky to catch his breath; Steve’s mostly dead weight, and Bucky’s grateful he’s started hitting the gym. When they finally make it to the evergreen bathroom, Steve spins around and lands on the floor in a seated position with an uncharacteristically loud plop. Steve is usually so light on his feet, the embodiment of stealth. Not so much, now.

“How much did you drink tonight, bud?” Bucky asks in astonishment, hand on Steve’s shoulder as Steve sways drunkenly in his sitting position in the bathroom. It wasn’t so long ago that Bucky was the one hovering and swaying with nausea right here over this very porcelain throne.

“A fifth,” Steve says, cheeky. His head lolls back; it makes Bucky nervous.

“Jesus,” Bucky curses, frustrated. “What got into you, Rogers?”

“I told you,” Steve mumbles. “A _fifth_.” A giggle. The oaf has the audacity to think he’s being clever right now. “Fifth of rum. Well, the first one was rum...”

“No, what got _into_ you? I’ve never seen you so much as have a taste of alcohol, and now this?”

“Can’t find Clint,” Steve says, and Bucky actually watches Steve’s heart break all over again on his face. “Can’t find Clint...and...swore, I swore, Bucky, Bucky I swore to protect him, and I wanted to protect him, I love all you guys, each and every one, I lost him, I lost Clint and I failed him, I took him under my wing and I...” Steve starts to drift, leaning his head back against the wall. Bucky sighs sadly. The guilt’s eating Steve Rogers alive.

“Don’t close your eyes yet, pal. You’re gonna wanna puke before you fall asleep tonight. Trust me,” Bucky says, remembering none too fondly his own youthful, drunken adventures. Friends rubbing his back in bar bathroom stalls. Hurling in bushes.

“I don’t wanna puke, Buck. I don’t, I really really don’t. Really,” Steve says, slurring. Bucky’s heard that one before.

“That’s okay,” Bucky replies. “Let’s just wait here, though, okay?” Steve looks so...young. And for once, scared. Bucky crawls down from where he’s been perched on the lip of the bathroom tub to sit next to Steve who is, somehow, shivering. They’re now shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye (give or take a few inches – Steve’s certainly the taller one).

“Hi,” Steve whispers, finally. He’s looking straight at him, and even drunk, it’s unnerving to be under Steve’s gaze, where he can see Bucky for what he is.

But Bucky snorts a laugh. “ _Hi_ , Steve.”

Steve readjusts, facing him, leaning in close. Bucky can smell the alcohol on his breath – yep, definitely rum – and Bucky doesn’t know what to do with this mass of human that’s all up in his face. Or the fact that it’s starting to turn him on a little bit, which makes him feel both excited and gross. It’s not Steve’s fault that he hasn’t gotten laid in four months and this is the closest their mouths have been.

“Steve...” Bucky says, a warning. Steve misses it entirely.

“Bucky, I want you so bad,” Steve slurs, a big hand wrapping around Bucky’s thigh.

What?

“No, no, Steve, we can’t–” Bucky says, starting to squirm away. It’s not right. Not like this.

“But I, but I, I _want_ you. James Buchanan Barnes. Wanted, wanted you since the day you got left on my doorstep, how’s that for irony,” Steve mumbles, annoyed and not moving an inch. “Bucky.” Daringly, Steve reaches for Bucky’s dog tags that _clink_ around his neck day and night, as if to drag Bucky in close. With his right hand, Bucky presses the tags against his chest – to his heart, really – to prevent Steve from grabbing at them. This only makes Steve pout, looking miserable and lustful and _wanting._

Every nerve-ending Bucky has is on _fire_. He knows it’s the alcohol talking. He knows Steve’s overly emotional about Clint’s MIA status. He knows that Steve’s far, far too drunk to consent. And he knows that if none of this were true, he still can’t date Steve because Steve is giving him a place to live until he gets over his unfortunate addiction to heroin. This is a halfway house. Steve runs it. Bucky needs it. They can’t be fuck-buddies or lovers or any of the million titles that would give Bucky permission to press his lips to Steve’s right now.

And yet.

And yet after all his weeks of pining and pushing his illicit feelings away, Steve is finally in front of him, shiny, full lips only a breath away from his own, loose and ready and claiming to _want_ him. _Him_. This ghost of a person who can hardly put one foot in front of the other, who’s afraid of fireworks and his own shadow, who slips around the house unnoticed by all but Steve, who just won’t let him slip away. This is who Steve is claiming to want. He can’t say it doesn’t do something to his heart to know that there’s someone who’s seen the most broken parts of him and still thinks he’s worth putting back together. His nightmares haven’t been the only falling he’s been up to these past few months.

He sighs, hating himself for what he’s about to do.

“No, Steve. You’re too drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying. You won’t even remember this in the morning,” Bucky mutters, mostly for his own sake, because Steve probably _won’t_ remember this in the morning. Which is why they can’t do anything. Not tonight, or ever.

“Buck...” Steve says, hurt. It tears actual fissures into Bucky’s glass heart.

“Come on, Rogers,” Bucky says, swallowing his own emotions and putting on a kind face so he can get Steve to puke and go to sleep. He pulls Steve’s hand off his own thigh and sits himself back on the rim of the bathtub, the better to guide Steve to the toilet when the time comes. And the safer to ensure that Steve doesn’t let him get carried away. As Bucky anticipated, it only takes a few minutes before Steve shows the telltale signs of sickness: first the slowed breaths, then the nauseating rocking, and then, of course, the gagging.

“Alright, heeere we go,” Bucky guides, gently pulling Steve toward the toilet by his shoulders. The vomit hits the water with a cringeworthy splash, but Bucky’s more than used to the noise. He pets Steve’s hair and softly eggs him on, willing Steve to get more and more of the poison out of his system. Steve looks miserable, but finally finishes, which almost makes Bucky sad. He’d liked carding his fingers through Steve’s surprisingly soft hair, liked having Steve rely on him, need him, in a way. Liked having a PG excuse to touch, to hold.

But Steve’s done, and doesn’t have much energy left in him, so Bucky flushes for the eighth time and gets Steve a Dixie cup to rinse his mouth out. It’s the best he can do – Steve’s toothbrush is upstairs, and there’s no way that Bucky can get him up there, and certainly no way it wouldn’t wake the rest of the house if he tried.

He manages to get Steve off the bathroom floor, which is a victory in and of itself, and by talking Steve through it, he gets the man into his bed. Bucky’d reasoned it was the best place for Steve to sleep tonight – the second floor was not an option and everyone would know what happened if Steve puked off the side of the couch, which, at this rate, he might.

So he ambles the giant down the hallway on socked feet, praying for him not to bump any walls or knock anything over, and finally Steve tumbles out of his arms and into the bed. He looks at Bucky longingly from the pillows, as if about to say something; his fingers twitch upward, once, and then he’s out. Bucky sighs, the emotions he’d kept at bay flooding back in as he watches Steve sleep peacefully on his side.

Bucky looks up at the ceiling, wordlessly asking God _why_.

This was not how he imagined getting Steve Rogers into his bed. Not one bit. He leaves several Advil and a glass of water on the bedside table and hovers for a minute longer than is absolutely necessary, imagining meeting Steve in a different universe, under a different set of circumstances.

Chivalrously, Bucky grabs a spare blanket and pillow from one of the hallway cupboards and crashes on the love seat with his feet dangling off and onto a bean bag chair. He’ll ache at the auto shop tomorrow, but it’s a small price to pay.

It’s practically five – the sun is already blinking awake, and he’ll have to be up in two hours (plans to call in sick start formulating) and still, Bucky can’t sleep. Clint’s out there, somewhere, lost or high or injured, he couldn’t say. He worries, frowning into the pillows. It grinds on him.

But not as much as his desire for Steve to grind on him. He tosses and turns, uncomfortable, wondering what it would be like to press himself against that strong chest, those full lips. He wants to play with Steve’s hair forever, and he’s kicking himself for letting the moment slip away from him, for not even telling Steve how he feels when Steve wouldn’t have remembered anyway. Just to get the damn thing off his chest.

\---

In the morning, he wakes up stiff with his heart beating like a hummingbird’s and sits up like he’s been electrocuted. A bad dream, it was a bad dream...

He was falling again. He’s always falling.

It only takes him a second or two for the pieces to come back into place and memories of last night – Clint, Steve, _Steve_ – to remind him how he ended up on the couch.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Peter says from the kitchen, packing his lunch and getting ready for school. Yikes, Bucky feels old. “Sorry if I woke you, Mr. Barnes.”

“Kid, call me Bucky. _Please_ ,” he says around a giant yawn.

“Right, sorry, sir.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. Kid’s too polite for his own damn good. That shit’ll get him beat up in these parts. At least, it did in Brooklyn.

“Any word on Clint?” Bucky asks, stretching out on the couch before he makes to get up. Steve’ll be ready to drive him to work in forty minutes, but he’s _exhausted_ and can’t move just yet. Besides, he’s not exactly convinced that Steve’s going to be on his A-game today.

“No, I was hoping you might know something,” Peter says sheepishly. It’s the quietest and slowest Bucky’s ever heard him talk; usually, he’s going a mile a minute.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, at a loss for what to say next.

Suddenly, from where he’s sitting up on the couch, Bucky can see Steve’s rumpled hair and confused face poking out of his own bedroom; the exact sight he doesn’t want Peter to see.

 _Get. Back. In. There._ Bucky mouths to Steve, who looks even more lost. If only he knew sign language like Barton. Bucky tries a hand gesture. Stay put, Rogers. Stay put. Finally, understanding flashes across Steve’s face, and he slips back into the room and closes the door like a whisper.

“Well, guess you better be off to school, now, champ,” Bucky tries, rushing Peter out the door. “You got all your stuff?”

“The bus doesn’t leave for another twenty minutes. And don’t call me ‘champ.’ Weirdo.”

“There’s the Peter I know and love,” Bucky chirps, knowing if he agitates the easily embarrassed fifteen-year-old, he can get the coast clear for Rogers to disappear upstairs.

After a little heckling, Peter finally takes the bait and slips out of the house with his red-and-blue backpack slung over one shoulder. Bucky’s shoulders sag in relief; he tosses the throw blanket off his legs and tiptoes quickly over to his own bedroom to free Steve.

Steve opens the door immediately when Bucky taps quietly thrice. They’re practically nose to nose, and Steve gives him an embarrassed, apologetic look, like he wants to say something but can’t. Bucky just nods his head urgently toward the stairwell, the universal language for _go_ , and Steve jets out with his ears red.

When he slips back into his own bedroom, Bucky leans his back against the door, and takes a deep, remorseful breath, before getting ready to face the day.

 

The car ride is awkward, made no better by the fact that neither knows how much of last night Steve remembers. Steve white-knuckles the steering wheel with both hands, only releasing his right to change the gear and then go right back. Bucky watches Steve out of the corner of his eye, wondering what the hell could be going on in that big head of his.

“Mind if we pick up Starbucks on the way in? I’m fried,” Bucky says into the quiet. Steve practically jumps.

“What?”

“...a coffee run?” Bucky supplies, again.

“Oh sure, sure.” Steve cruises along down the freeway, even inching over the speed limit a couple of times.

“Can we talk about last night?” Bucky finally asks, tired. Steve knows everything about him, from his mother’s death to grappling with his addiction to his middle name. He doesn’t have anything to hide from Steve, not anymore. Might as well lay it all out there.

Shame is a wasted emotion.

Steve clears his throat. “Yes, I was hoping we...would.”

“You’re white as a ghost, Rogers. It’s okay, really. I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart.”

“I know you won’t, Buck,” Steve replies, suddenly sad for reasons Bucky can’t understand. “That’s not what I’m worried about. I just...first, I want, _need_ , to apologize. You should not have had to take care of me last night. It’s spotty, I admit, but... I run a halfway house. I have a responsibility to you guys to not break the rules. I can only imagine what would’ve happened if it had been Jessica...or Christ, Peter. I just...I don’t know what happened to me. And I’m sorry you had to clean it up.” Steve’s entire chest is tense, his biceps literally pulsing. He stares straight ahead.

“Steve,” Bucky says honestly. “I’ve seen worse. Well, your mug might take the cake” – he grins – “But seriously. You were upset. We had a family crisis. You reacted poorly. Guess what? That makes you human, Rogers. And thank God, because honestly, I was starting to wonder.” He’s getting dangerously close to telling Steve that in Bucky’s eyes he’s a fucking _god_ , but he cuts himself off. He’s not sure how much Steve is ready to hear.

“I don’t just mean the alcohol, Buck.” _He remembers._

“Oh.” That shuts Bucky up real quick. He hasn’t done this in so long. Admit feelings? Flirt? He’s spent the last two years of his life either doped up in a hospital bed or doped up in back alleys of his own volition; keeping up on the nuances of modern romance just seemed to have slipped through the cracks.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t have to lead.

“I’m falling hard for you, Bucky,” Steve finally says, though his body doesn’t relax at all and his jaw starts clenching nervously. It all comes out in a rush. “I’m sorry, I’m not even sure you play for my team, but I...had to say something. I wanted to do it sober, honest. I was gonna say something sooner. But I...” And Steve looks at Bucky directly now, taking his eyes off the road for the first time this whole drive. Bucky ducks his head, sheepish, but Steve looks right at him, like the sun shines out of his ass. He lets the sentence hang in there, as if just looking at Bucky has made him forget the rest of his sentence.

“Steve...” Bucky starts, dying inside. Everything he wants a silver platter, but he knows better. And he _hates_ that he knows better.

“I know, I know you don’t feel the same way, I promise I’ll never mention it ever again, I just, with Clint, I didn’t want to wait until it was too late–”

“That’s not it,” Bucky interrupts. It’s his goddamn turn. He sucks in a sharp breath, resisting the urge to let his hand cover Steve’s on the gear shift as he exits the highway. “It’s...Christ, Rogers.” He almost laughs – he can’t believe that Steve doesn’t know how much he _wants_ him, wants to test his theory that their hands would slot together perfectly, that their mouths would slide together seamlessly, that his back is the exact size and shape for fitting into Steve’s wide, welcoming chest. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for you to make a move since the minute I woke up.”

Steve actually has to slam on the break.

“You...have?”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, both of them ignoring the light that’s now turning green. They’re facing each other, passenger and driver, hearts beating loud and fast in their chests. Bucky almost leans in, almost, but then–

_HONK._

And the moment is gone, and Steve lays into the gas, and the Jeep lurches forward.

“I don’t...think we can be together, though,” Bucky adds, sighing like this is the biggest regret of his life. And despite the mission on the train gone awry, despite not returning his mother’s phone call on the day that she died, despite not checking in with Clint after his hearing, despite the heroin and the coke and the Vicodin, it probably _is_ the biggest regret of his life.

Okay, he's being dramatic. Those were much bigger mistakes But  _still._

Steve doesn’t exactly help, looking at him with puppy eyes, his mouth turning down at the corners.

“You’re right,” Steve finally says, looking no less crushed. “You’re right, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Not here,” Bucky agrees, equally bummed. “Not when we live together. Not when I’m as fucked up as I am.”

“I don’t care that you’re–”

“Believe me, I know,” Bucky interrupts, not wanting to hear more reason and kindness from Steve. It’ll make this harder than it has to be. “But I need to get better, Steve. I need to finish this NA program, keep my job. We can’t have people in the house see us fucking, it just...we can’t.”

“I know, I know,” Steve says, though Bucky was satisfied by the noticeable shock that the word _fucking_ sent through Steve’s system. “It wouldn’t feel right, not now. I don’t like the power dynamics of it. I’m in a position of authority, and I hope you know I would never, _never_ take advantage of that. God, I – I wish I hadn’t said anything, Buck, I feel so manipulative.”

“Oh, please,” Bucky says as they pull into the Starbucks drive-thru. “We both know you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

They smile at each other kindly, nervously, each flash of teeth a white flag of truce. Deep down, Bucky knows this is the right thing; if he’s ever going to find out what Steve tastes like, it’s got to be when he’s sure that Steve’s not just doing it because he’s found someone who needs his help, which Bucky knows he likes to give in generous amounts.

\---

Bucky gets the call around noon, up to his elbow in motor oil.

“Barnes, it’s for you,” Joe calls from inside the small office, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

Bucky rushes to the phone, suddenly sweating.

Barton’s been found.


	5. Chapter 5

There’s commotion at the house when Bucky gets back – he’s left work two hours early, which’ll hurt when the next paycheck comes in, but that’s not on his mind right now. He’d taken the bus home the second he heard the news; this was too urgent to wait.

“How is he?” Bucky practically yells, storming in through the front door and pulling his sweaty T-shirt off as he does. People turn to look at him, surprised. Bucky’s not one for grand entrances, or yelling.

“Peachy,” Jessica says, rolling her eyes.

“He’s totally blitzed,” Sam says sternly, pouring himself a glass of orange juice.

“We put him up in his bed. Dr. Banner’s with him now; we’re on rotations. He’s already had two seizures this morning.”

“Fuck,” Bucky says, shaking his head.

"Yeah, one more and we're gonna have to take him to the hospital," Sam announces sadly. It's the last thing any of them want.

“He asked for you,” Vision tells him, which makes Bucky's heart sink. Maybe he should’ve called in sick today after all; there's a lump in his throat.

“Well, we _think_ he was asking for you,” Scarlet corrects from Vision's lap. “Since you’re the only one who talks to him in sign language.” Yeah, there’s definitely a lump in his throat now.

“What happened?” Peter says, barging through the door from school and practically running headfirst into Bucky’s back.

“It’s over your head, Pete. Can’t you go do your homework at a library or something?” Loki says from the couch, looking nonchalant though his eyes are tight. Bucky’s noticed he’s got a soft spot for the high schooler, always looking out for him.

“I’m from the ‘hood just as much as the rest of you. I’m not a child,” Peter whines ironically. But nobody challenges him; in Bucky’s eyes, he’s got as much a right to know as anyone.

“Clint came in stoned, Peter. Looks like meth again. He’s having a bad reaction; it might’ve been cut with something. He hasn’t come-to enough to tell us anything, yet,” Sam explains, taking charge.

It’s Bucky who asks the follow-up questions: How’d he get back? Where was he? Does Banner know the right procedures for seizures? Did Clint get caught? 

Clint, apparently, walked himself back, which is a mystery in and of itself because the guy’s completely out of his mind, swaying, hallucinating, talking mostly gibberish. There were no substances on his person when he came in, so they can’t send any of the drugs in for testing. No one’s even sure what he took; they called the courthouse the minute it opened this morning to get the results of the previous hearing – his wife is pushing for the Judge to terminate Barton’s parental rights regardless of his progress. It must’ve pushed him over the edge. Stress does that – at least, according to the pamphlets. The good news is he drug-tested immediately after the hearing and came back clean. The bad news is he broke probation, which is going to get him in trouble with his PO and probably mean another drug test in the next 48 hours.

There’s no way he’ll pass.

Bucky goes to check on him, and just seeing him – on his floor, a seizure precaution – the rise and fall of his chest, makes him feel relieved. Clint’s really there, big nose and all. Bruce gives Bucky a knowing half-smile from the chair, keeping quiet for Barton’s sake.

 

They all have a meeting that night, with Steve at the head. He purposely does not look at Bucky as he delivers a depressingly well-rehearsed spiel on relapse, being triggered by the presence of drugs, and the procedure for scheduling extra therapy hours with Sam. For those like Bucky and Peter, who are relatively new to the house, the meeting is painful as they hang onto every word. Steve tells them that most professionals just assume relapse as a part of the recovery process. Bucky has to actively not drop his jaw at some of the statistics. 91% of discharged heroin addicts report a relapse. _91%._ What the hell is going to happen to him when he tries to leave this place? What the fuck did he do to his poor brain?

The rest of them seem distracted, like maybe they’ve done this before. Scarlet pops her bubble gum and draws patterns on the top of Vision’s head, who’s sitting on the floor between her legs as she sits back on the love seat. Thor and Loki are passing notes, and Wade appears to be making a grocery list (Bucky finds out later that he was actually just playing fuck-marry-kill by himself).

What’s done is done. Clint will just have to pay whatever consequences he has to pay, and the best thing they can do right now is support him.

Late that night, when most of the housemates have drifted off to bed or work and Sam has relieved Steve of trip-sitting Clint, Bucky hears three taps on his door. Of course, it’s Steve’s head that appears.

“Hey,” he greets, smiling despite the unfortunate circumstances.

“Hi,” Bucky says, closing his book. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to check in, make sure you’re, uh, doing okay,” Steve says. Bucky has an inkling Steve didn’t know what he was going to say when he knocked.

“I’m alright, Steve. Don’t worry about me.”

“Yeah, yeah...okay. Goodnight, Buck.”

“Goodnight.”

\---

 _B-U-C-K-Y_ , Clint signs in the morning, still reeling when Bucky sneaks into his room with a cup of coffee. Sam’s asleep on the bed, and Bucky can’t really blame him for passing out. Everyone in this house is overworked and underpaid.

 _Hey, fella_ , Bucky signs back.

Clint’s in bad shape. He’s got tiny cuts all over his body, as if he fell into a shrub, his Pistons shirt is torn, and one particularly bad scrape on his cheek. His pupils are still blown wide and look distant, like he’s not quite focusing on what he’s seeing. But he’s wide awake, sitting up with his back against the nightstand.

_I fucked up, didn’t I?_

_A little._

_Sorry you have to see me like this._

_I_ _’ve seen worse, pal. Coffee?_

_You’re a saint._

_I know._

\---

Clint predictably fails the drug test the following Friday afternoon. Bucky would’ve tried to slip him a urine sample (as would just about anyone in the house – everyone owed Clint a favor by now), but it’s against the rules of the house, and no one can afford to be kicked out. You reap the seeds you sow. That’s that.

He gets arrested for breaking probation and failing the drug test, which unfortunately happens in the living room in front of Rhodes, Scott, Bruce, and Bucky, who at least had the wherewithal to get Peter out of the house and mind their own business, trying to give Clint the privacy he deserved. His court date is in two weeks; after that, he’s got a minimum 30-day sentence ahead of him, but with his record, Bucky wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 90. The justice system is fucked up, and it takes its toll, but Bucky starts visiting him at the jail – the poor guy doesn’t have anyone left. The only silver lining is that his ex-wife is ordered by the court to continue bringing the kids to his supervised weekly visitations. Bucky gets to meet them, once. A boy and girl, neither older than seven. He can see why they’re the light of Clint’s life.

Despite the open wound that is Clint’s noticeable absence, the routines pick back up again. Wade writes an article for the Detroit Free Press about middle-aged white women and their absurd obsession with tree sloths that gets picked up by the Washington Post, and they all go out to Applebee’s to celebrate. Jessica graduates her AA program and is hugged tightly and gifted with small tokens to remember them by when she announces that she’s moving out; she gets a day-job as a receptionist at the U of M hospital in Ann Arbor, which is a step up from her overnight security position. Steve has the hardest time saying goodbye, on the verge of tears, and leaves her with an appropriately tacky mug that reads: _Can you tell I’m not a morning person?_ It suits her.

An enormous, handsome guy named Luke takes her place, and suddenly Bucky isn’t the newest housemate anymore. It feels good to be one of them. He likes not having to ask stupid questions, like how the washing machine works or where they keep the scissors. He pays Luke the same respect he was given when he first arrived; giving a wide berth of personal space and showing him around the house during quiet times so he can get acclimated. He’s been assigned to live in assisted housing as part of his probation, but he seems amiable enough to the situation. Former crackhead. He scratches himself until he bleeds. The chewing tobacco Thor picks up for him seems to help.

Despite the agreement Bucky and Steve came to, there’s no denying they’re getting closer. They somehow always end up with the same chores and cooking dinner on the same nights. Steve splurges and purchases a motorcycle, so there are no more carpools, which Bucky misses, but Steve makes up for the lost time in other ways. He makes excuses to walk with Bucky when he takes Dodge out in the evenings, their steps now crunchy with fallen leaves. _I’ve got to check the mail anyway. I really need to stretch my legs after sitting at my desk all day. It’s just such a nice night._ Whatever the excuse, Bucky doesn’t question it; the company is nice, and if Steve remembers to bring the frisbee, they’ll stop at the park for an hour. It’s not half bad.

Therapy is rough. Bucky’s got a lot of guilt on his too-clear conscience, and the longer he stays sober, the louder the voices in his head. Life around the house and in bustling Detroit distract him enough during the day, but Sam’s a little too good at dragging it all up on their agreed-upon Sunday morning sessions. The nightmares keep him up at night. He and Sam arrange to go to a military flag burning ceremony together one Friday after Sam discloses that the man in the frame on his desk was Riley, his best friend who was KIA. It starts to heal the wounds.

He finds that he doesn’t crave heroin anymore unless he’s actively thinking about it. The pain in his bad shoulder never escalates to more than a dull ache, and even though Detroit is no walk in the park, he’s far enough from his bad influences and dealers and familiar street lights that lured him to the narcotics the first time. Sometimes, though, he’ll break out in hives or sweats for no reason. The headaches have dulled, but he gets the occasional migraine that leaves him bedridden for hours with the curtains drawn and a just-in-base bucket next to his bed. The gaps in his memory are permanent, but he really is starting to look healthier. His dark brown hair, which he’s decided to keep long, looks shiny and healthy again. His eyes are bright. He’s getting smile lines at the corners of his mouth, and he’s never been so proud to earn a wrinkle in his life. He’s not in the best shape of his life, but he’s not in the worst, either. When he finally upgrades to an iPhone to meet the rest of the century, he spends an hour in the bathroom, taking selfies. He deletes all of them, embarrassed, but he had to see. He’s just so happy to look like himself again.

All that said, Bucky is working on a pretty big project. He keeps it on the down low, not wanting to make any announcements about it and jinx the whole thing. Besides, first he has to figure out how to get Steve on board.

\---

“Hi, Pepper,” Bucky smiles, feeling a little awkward as he holds the phone out in front of him. He’s FaceTiming for what feels like the first time (Becca tells him they used to Skype when he was at his army base in Afghanistan, but it’s one of the things the concussion took with it).

“Sergeant!” she coos, excited. They’ve been texting for weeks, but it’s the first time she’s seen his face or heard his voice. He laughs, blushing. She’s a beautiful woman, probably in her thirties, with stick-straight blonde hair and not a stitch of makeup. Tony’s a lucky guy.

Or maybe Bucky just has a thing for blondes.

“Mr. Stark suggested we call and confirm all the details for next weekend,” Bucky says, nervous. “There are a couple of requests I wanted to go over.”

“Of course, Sergeant. Tony’s elated about how perfectly this all came together. And that you’re from Brooklyn, no less. Stark Industries has been doing tune-ups on the prototype for about three weeks now, and the testing is nearly complete. Would you like me to show you the tech?”

“You have it now?” Bucky sputters. He’s not sure he’s ready.

But in the little screen, he can see Pepper going through some big, futuristic metal doors, unlocking things with a card. There are lots of beeps and _whooshing_ noises on her end, and the sound cuts in and out for a minute as the connection wavers. After a whole lot of shuffling, she apologizes for the inconvenience and switches to the front camera, so he can see what she’s seeing.

“There it is,” she announces pleasantly.

The equipment gleams in the light, almost sparkling it’s so shiny and new. A complex layer of moving plates work their way down the tech for optimal movement; Bucky can already tell it will ripple like water with full flexibility. It’ll stick out, sure – a big titanium arm like that. But it’s sleek and beautiful and just like something out of one of his books, and he loves it already.

“Is it heavy?” he asks, amazed.

“Incredibly lightweight, but we’re going to add weights so it matches your right arm to give you maximum control. Wouldn’t want you overcompensating. The finer details will have to be arranged here, when we have you in New York,” she says intelligently, though the arm is still filling his view. “Now, you wanted to talk about some requests, Sergeant?”

“I, yes!” Bucky says, breaking from his reverie of admiration. He’s so excited he could sing. “Um, it’s about the operation. Will Mr. Stark be completing it himself?”

“Oh God no,” Potts laughs, a pleasant tinkling. “No, we want to keep you _alive_. Tony may be a certain kind of genius, but if the man had a scalpel I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. No, Dr. Gupta, one of the best surgeons in the country, will be completing the operation.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. He’s not sure how to tell her the rest.

“Your request, Sergeant? I’ve got a meeting in five.”

“Yes, yes. I...have some health issues. This operation... well. I have some conditions, ma’am. First, no hospitals.”

“Done. We have labs right here in Stark Tower.”

“Great,” Bucky huffs. One down. “Also, no painkillers.”

“You–you’re sure? This is going to be a highly invasive operation, Sergeant. You may want to think twice about–”

“No,” Bucky says, immediately regretting interrupting the most powerful woman in the country next to FLOTUS. “No painkillers. And finally, no anesthesia.”

“Sergeant...” Pepper says, slowly, a hint of worry creeping into her voice.

“Those are my conditions, ma’am. I’m happy to play guinea pig with Mr. Stark’s new technology, and I’m happy to complete all the physical therapy, tests, and reports for his research. Really, truly I am. But this is the only way I can do it.” He stands his ground, though his voice shakes.

“If you say so, Sergeant,” she replies, turning the camera around on her face again. “Well, I look forward to seeing you here soon. We’ll send some agents to collect you next Friday.”

“That’s actually another thing,” Bucky says, gently now. He’s not trying to ask too much of the philanthropist-billionaires trying to give him a high-tech prosthetic arm for free. “I’m actually going to road trip out there a few days early, if that’s okay. Your agents can collect me in Brooklyn. I’d like to see my family.” _And get Steve to come with me_.

“That we can work with, sir. Thanks for your participation in our study, and safe driving.” She smiles, then ends the call.

Bucky has the sort of inkling that if he does drive out to New York, one of Stark’s guys will be quietly on his tail the entire time. But he’s alright with that. The hard part will be getting Steve to come with him.

\---

“No,” Steve says for the eightieth time as Bucky pleads with him over dinner. They’re back at the Thai place, this time on Bucky’s suggestion, which probably tipped Steve off early that Bucky wanted something from him. The wait staff all know their names and orders, and they get spring rolls on the house.

“Steve, when is the last time you left the state of Michigan?”

“Pretty sure we took Clint to Toledo for Chick-Fil-A last year.”

“Steve.”

“I’m not humoring your questions, Buck. I know this is important to you, but I’ve got to stay here. We’ve already had one relapse this fall; I’m not about to let any of these guys off my watch.”

Bucky sighs dramatically. Steve looks especially good today in crisp aviators and a NASA sweatshirt to beat out the incoming cold. It’s been a warm fall so far, but there’s certainly a bite in the air to warn them that winter is coming. Steve’s even starting to grow a bit of a beard, which makes it all the harder to focus and argue with him.

“Do you really have that little faith in Sam?” Bucky tries, going for a new angle.

“Don’t you turn this on me like that. You know I trust Sam Wilson with my life,” Steve replies.

“Then let him run the goddamn place for _five days_. Five days, Steve, that’s all I’m asking. We drive out Wednesday in the Jeep. It’s only eleven hours from here; ten if I’m driving.” Bucky winks, trying to lighten the mood. Steve laughs against his will, and then makes his face serious again, not trying to give Bucky an inch. “We can go _home_. See Brooklyn again, have a little freedom. You know you miss a New York style hot dog as much as I do.”

“Of course I do, Bucky. This is not about New York. This is about family.”

“Exactly!” Bucky says, earnest. “Steve, that’s where our _moms_ are. I want to go to her grave, and I know you do, too.”

Steve looks down. “Please don’t bring my Ma into this.”

“Okay, okay. But seriously, Steve. I don’t know if I can do this surgery alone. I don’t know if I can be in Brooklyn without someone holding me accountable.”

“Ask Wade,” Steve urges. “Or Scott, or Scarlet, or Vision, or Thor, or Loki, or Rhodes. Ask any of them, Buck. But I’ve got to stay here.”

“You know it wouldn’t be the same,” Bucky accuses. “I don’t know them like I know you.”

Steve rubs his beard, frustrated. “You know I would if I could, Buck. Don’t play me like this.”

“You _can_ ,” Bucky says, tired but not giving up. “The only thing between you and Brooklyn is yourself, Steve. You work so fucking hard. Don’t you see you deserve a break?”

“Right, and babysitting you in New York is going to be a break?” Steve bites. His face shows immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. Bucky sits there, stung, and his features collapse. He knew...he knew Steve was just a good samaritan, that Bucky was just another heroin addict caught in Steve's revolving door...he knew Steve must think of him this way, but...

“That... that came out wrong. Buck, Bucky I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Being with you is never a chore, I– it’s my favorite thing in the world, honest to God. I just mean that worrying about you and your surgery, wondering if you’re going to be okay and if the doctors did everything right... is hardly going to give me a chance to breathe.” Bucky’d be mad if Steve didn’t look so torn-up and sincere right now, his words coming out in a frantic rush. Steve laughs sadly. “Lord, I can’t stop thinking about it, Buck. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Bucky puts his palm on the table, and Steve takes it, and it feels like forgiveness.

An emotion Bucky doesn’t have a name for rolls through him and leaves him tingling. Steve’s going to worry about him?

“Come with me,” Bucky whines, desperate now. “Please.”

Steve sighs, big and heavy. “I’ll think about it. Okay?”

“Yes!” Bucky hisses, punching the air with his right hand.

“Don’t count your chickens,” Steve warns, and Bucky swoons.

\---

There’s plenty of preparation to be done. He talks to Phil at work and asks for the week off; he visits Clint in the jail one last time and gets a hearty _good luck_ signed at him from behind the plexiglass. He goes to Salvation Army with Scarlet, who helps him pick out a new suit, or rather, put one together. He wants to look professional when he shakes Tony Stark’s hand and thanks him for his generosity. When he comes out of the changing room in the night-black three-piece suit, Scarlet gives him a watery smile; on the bus home, she tells him he can call her Wanda (but only when no one else is around).

Steve avoids him like the plague, probably afraid that Bucky will corner him and convince him into the road trip. Bucky’s not sure what Steve’s so afraid of, but whatever it is, it’s scaring the shit out of him. Everyone’s picked up on the weird vibes already, so Bucky decides not to keep it a secret anymore. He adds, in his tiny, cursive writing, _The Tripod Gets a New Arm_ to the house calendar next to the refrigerator and the grocery list that someone (Wade) has added lube to, like, six times. While he’s there, he notices the _SUPER STAR POINTS_ board that he hasn’t checked in weeks. Luke’s been added to the list, though whoever jotted him in just wrote THE CAGE, which amuses him. He scans through the assortment of compliments until he gets to his own name. Beside it, people have written him notes in gel pen.

_Always makes a point to visit Barton in jail every week, no matter how crazy life is! -Sam_

_Thanks for fixing the leaky faucet, Bucky. IOU!_

_You really hooked it up with showing me around the house. Thx for making me feel welcome._

_I might even miss you when I’m gone. Key word: Might. -JJ_

_I think Dodge loves you more than me. I mean, he loves you more than he loves me. Not more than I love you. Not that I love you. Well, I love you *like* family. (Yikes)._  
_SGR_

They make him feel so full inside. If someone had asked him a year ago if he’d ever be a normal person again, he would have told them to go fuck themselves and then probably stabbed himself with a needle. But here he is, with people he can actually call friends who can make him laugh until his stomach hurts. People who see the good in him, however deep down it may be, and write it down for him on their goddamn fridge.

And Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve. He presses his fingertips to the place where Steve has inscribed his note, feeling the indents of the pen on the page, and sighs. Someday, buddy. Maybe someday.


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky’s in the driveway, dressed now in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a warm brown leather jacket with a scarf around his neck. Dodge is out in the front yard off leash, wagging his tail wickedly (he thinks he’s going for a ride) and scrambling excitedly around Bucky’s feet. He carefully maneuvers around the dog, careful not to step on his paws, as he opens the trunk of Steve’s Jeep and tosses his duffel bag inside.

Unlike the first time he picked up the bag, back when he was trying to run out on Steve and the halfway house months ago, his duffel is now filled with things. New shoes. His three-piece suit. A fucking comb, Jesus Christ. Toothpaste _and_ deodorant. His iPhone and charger, a few new clothing items for fall. An umbrella. The tool kit he’s been slowly accumulating; he hates using the shared ones at the shop. His dog tags, of course, remain around his neck. It’s not much, but it’s _his_ , and it makes a difference.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Steve says lightheartedly, popping out the front door with his own duffel and a pillow. “This is absolutely crazy.”

“Bull,” Bucky smiles wide, helping Steve throw his bag on top of Bucky’s. “This is exactly what you need and you know it.”

“I hate that you’re right,” Steve teases, clapping Bucky on the shoulder and then moving to the driver’s seat. “You got everything?” He says over the roof of the car to Bucky, who’s starting to pull on the handle of the passenger door.

After a second of hesitation, Bucky runs inside to grab their coffees, and then they’re off, waving goodbye to the small cluster of folks that have gathered outside the front door to send them off. Rhodes holds onto Dodge’s collar, who whines and jumps, clearly wanting to follow the car. Bucky mouths a _thank you_ to Sam, who he knows pulled some strings and did some convincing to get Steve to finally leave the house in his capable hands. Sam returns the look with a gracious nod, and they turn the corner.

There’s no going back now. Their bags are packed, the miles are disappearing beneath their wheels, the sun is shining and it’s peak fall, when the leaves are at their most beautiful and the sunsets their most magnificent. They hit fog and rain as they make their way through Ohio and later Pennsylvania, switching drivers at every rest stop they break for. Bucky is back to his old self, feeling comfortable beside Steve, and they’re both giddy with excitement for returning to their home territory. Brooklyn. _Brooklyn_. The word tastes sweet in their mouths and they share it like candy, swapping stories and laughing at almost-forgotten memories.

Bucky is a little nervous, sharing a few of the details of his upcoming operation and the doubts he has about it with Steve. He’s been chewing on it for a while now. Will being whole again make it harder to reckon with the fact that he’s still broken on the inside? Is he going to look like a robot? If the surgery doesn’t work, if this bionic arm short-circuits, will his heart stop beating? Will it fry him? Steve knows just what to say at every turn, even giving him advice on how to talk to Tony.

“I promise you, he’s not as tall as he looks on TV,” Steve laughs, completely uninhibited at the wheel with all of his stresses miles behind him.

Bucky naps some. Steve listens to NPR and then oldies. They gossip about the other housemates; Steve has an inkling that Vision is going to propose soon. This makes Bucky beam – he would love for Wanda to be happy. And Peter’s on track to move back in with his aunt after the holidays. Steve talks about them with a kind of possessive pride.

Over dinner at a highway-side Panera in Pennsylvania, Steve tells Bucky about his mother – how she kept her job as a nurse until she was literally bedridden, helping people right up until the end. How she trusted him so completely that when he told her the money he was earning was from selling newspapers (instead of cocaine), she ate up every word, and it killed him inside. He described her laugh, like wind chimes, and her thick Irish accent that embarrassed him when he was a kid.

“When I was little, I wanted to be tall, like her. She was 5’11”,” Steve reminisces over their generic mac ‘n’ cheeses.

“So that’s where you get it from,” Bucky smiles.

“Okay, but wait, she used to put newspapers in my shoes so I could be taller,” Steve laughs now, nothing but happy thoughts. “God, that woman would do anything for me.”

\---

The only thing that really shuts them up is the sight of the New York City skyline emerging on the horizon as the sun’s going down.

“Ain’t she a sight for sore eyes,” Steve says, and there’s emotion in his voice. Bucky just nods, reveling. It’s Brooklyn. He’s home.

\---

Finally, around eight o’ clock, they knock on Natasha’s door.

“Would you look at what the cat dragged in,” Natasha says smugly in that raspy way of hers as the apartment door swings open; uncharacteristically, she pulls Bucky in for a tight hug, squeezing and all.

“You _scared_ me, you bastard,” she whispers in his ear.

“And you must be Steve.” She smiles in her close-lipped way, offering her surprisingly dainty hand, which he shakes pleasantly. For a second there, Bucky thinks Steve's gonna kiss it like the old man he is, but he lets her hand down slow. It’s always a strange paradox with Nat; somehow embodying both the essence of femininity and also the warrior-like grace of _I could crush you between my thighs at any given moment_. All in all, he finds it pretty badass. Bucky has to internally high-fives himself: he has the coolest friends on the planet.

It hits him. This is the kind of joy that people are talking about when they say “It gets better.” This, right here, is what he stuck around for. The hours of crying himself to sleep and waking up screaming for his life; the itching and barfing and pounding headache of withdrawals; the therapy that drags on and the NA meetings that start way too goddamn early int he morning. Recovery was worth it if it means keeping people like Steve and Nat in his life.

Nat’s place is on the eighth floor, and her hallway looks just like the set of _Friends –_  brick walls and painted green doors and narrow corners. Bucky wishes the place felt more familiar – he lived here for a couple months just this past year, and yet he doesn’t really recognize the furniture, the street, the set up. It’s a depressing reminder of how much _time_ he lost to the heroin, and how much more important his remaining time has become. He doesn’t even remember the two black-and-white kittens that come curiously to greet him and Steve.

“This is Kilo,” Natasha points. “And this is November. I got them last month.” Oh, thank God. Bucky knows he’ll never be able to tell them apart, but they’re cute, and he’s grateful to know that he _didn’t_ forget them. But they make him long for Antoinette and remind him that he’s got to make a trip home, no matter how much it’s gonna hurt.

Natasha sets Steve up on the couch, and Bucky will sleep with her in her queen-sized bed. They’ve been best friends long enough that it’s not weird, and even though Bucky’s bi, there’s never been a single pulse of sexual tension between them. Natasha’s a powerhouse in and of her herself, and they’re both acutely aware of how far she is out of his league, heroin or not. Regardless, he’s always loved her like a sister.

She’s a good hostess, passing on alcohol tonight in their presence (“You’ve inspired me, Bucky, now I only drink on days of the week that end in ‘Y.’ Kidding, kidding”) and they catch up at her kitchen table until the men’s eyes are drooping. Nat suggests Cards Against Humanity, but they decline; Steve and Bucky are both exhausted, and it shows, so she brings them towels instead and finishes making up Steve’s bed on the couch with her extra sheets. Besides, Bucky’s not quite sure Steve’s pure heart could handle such a crass game. Maybe another day.

While Steve’s in the shower, Nat and Bucky plop into her bed, still disbelieving that they’re here together again. She smiles at him, taking him all in again. She’s already told him a dozen times how healthy he looks now. The relief in her eyes is palpable as she hugs a pillow to her chest and smirks at him beneath her burst of red hair.

Trust Natasha to always surprise him, though.

“So, how long have you been boning Steve?” she says, wiggling her eyebrows at him. Christ, Bucky feels like he’s back in middle school.

“I’m not!” he says too quickly, throwing a pillow at her face. She barks a laugh.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, hands up, looking wickedly toward him. “It just seemed like you two _were_ fucking from the way he absentmindedly rubs circles into your back and sits too close to you and doesn’t ever break eye contact with you? My b, though.”

“Nat!” Bucky whines, blushing.

“You should at least _talk_ to him.” Why is Natasha the all-knowing goddess that she is?

“I can’t,” Bucky sighs, rolling over in the bed dramatically. “I can’t flirt with Steve. He’s _Steve_. He’s taking care of me because I’m a heroin addict, not because I’m _me_. He’s just a nice person. Too nice, honestly. And I can’t fuck things up with him; as much as I hate to say it, I need to stay in that house; it’s the best thing that’s fucking happened to me since I came home from the war. No offense, Nat. Your couch was great, too.”

“Oh, pssht. You were not long for this world on that couch.”

“Which is why I can’t date Steve!” Bucky says, almost too loudly, throwing his hand up.

“Still, Barnes, I knew you were going through some stuff, but I didn’t know you’d lost your game _that_ much. Your guys’ sexual tension is unreal. You should definitely be boning him.”

“ _Nat_ ,” he hisses again. Steve could _hear them_ for Christ’s sake.

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Nat laughs, then muses. “On second thought, _do_.” She laughs again, and Bucky can feel himself turning red up to his ears.

She mercifully drops her voice to a whisper. “But you do want to, don’t you? It’s written all over you, Bucky.” She licks her lips, eating this up. Bucky wants the floor to swallow him whole right about now.

“Nat, he’s...Jesus, what do you want me to say? The man is perfect. Literally, flawless. He has never done anything wrong in his life ever. Actually, I take that back. He sold drugs once _to pay for his mom’s chemo_. And underneath that T-shirt? Washboard abs, Nat. WASHBOARD.”

They fall into a fit of giggles, swooning like teenagers.

“He’s totally into you, babe,” she practically sings, hanging off the bed upside down.

“But...Romanov,” Bucky starts, a serious note falling into his voice. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Or even what he thinks. We live together right now. It’s....off the radar. It has to be. End of story.”

She sighs dramatically and puts her hand on her heart, mumbling something about star-crossed lovers.

\---

The next morning they get an early start. Natasha wakes them both up (intentionally, which makes him grumble) as she gets ready for work; Bucky glares at her from under the covers as she puts her mascara on in the mirror, mouth forming a perfect ‘o.’ She makes up for _some_ of it by brewing a pot of coffee. Nat dresses business casual, with a fancy watch hanging off her wrist, and it makes him wonder again what _exactly_ Natasha Romanov does for the U.S. government.

He lays in bed for a minute, enjoying the limpness of his limbs and the joy of not waking up to a blaring alarm for once. He half-listens to Steve’s phone call to Sam in the other room, checking in on everyone and being a true-to-his-form worrywart. As Bucky relishes the softness of the morning, it dawns on him why he’s so relaxed – he didn’t have a nightmare last night. Must’ve had something to do with having a warm body to sleep next to. He smiles into one of her pillows, relishing it; it’s the best sleep he’s gotten in months.

Bucky’s still got two days until the operation, and he and Steve have plans to explore their old neighborhood today. It’s funny – they have so many memories from the same places, probably walked past each other on the streets a hundred times, and yet didn’t meet until Bucky landed on his deathbed in Detroit, Michigan. Wild.

They dress for fall; it’s been an unusually warm October in both Michigan and New York, which sends Steve on a rant about global warming and the importance of bees as they slip out of Natasha’s apartment together. Her coffee was good, but Best Coffee Shop is better (and has eggs), and so they beeline there first.

Bucky loves Brooklyn, but he loves to see it more through Steve’s eyes. It almost makes him laugh – by the way Steve ogles the buildings, people watches, and lets his mouth hang open as he takes in his old city, you’d think he was a tourist. Bucky is far more nonchalant, a New Yorker through and through. He doesn’t wait for crosswalks and knows all of the back-alley shortcuts.

“The Midwest’s changed you,” Bucky teases when they get to the diner, knocking their shoulders together. Steve ducks his head, smiling. But he lays on his accent thick after that, just to prove a point. The diner is packed, as usual, and the waitresses are all Greek and yell at each other across the restaurant, pushing people along and not making pleasantries as they refill coffee cups or fetch ketchup for someone’s hash. It takes Bucky way, way back. Fucking Brooklyn. He never gets tired of it.

After breakfast, they meander through Prospect Park, one of Steve’s favorite places in the borough. Bucky points at various spots and remembers some of his sins, spinning stories for Steve about his youthful debauchery as he talks with his hand, eyes bright. Some stories aren’t so bad: his first cigarette, the time he got to third base with Eliza Eller and a police officer showed up, the stray dog he found and tried to sell to folks walking by when he was eleven.

But some are horrifying, and he keeps them to himself, locks them up close to his heart. The first time he sucked someone off for drug money. The lamp post where he used to meet his dealer. The time he woke up face down on a park bench. He starts looking around as if out of habit, scanning the park for that shifty character, those shadow-like someones who he knows will have on hand  _exactly_ what he's looking for. He's itching at himself, mostly harmlessly. Scratches at his neck, rubbing his palm down his pant leg nervously. Sweating again. He hasn't sweat like this since June. The world starts to tilt.

Suddenly, his chest feels heavy, and he needs to sit down; Steve surely notices by the way Bucky’s stories have run dry, the panic that’s left him with shaky breaths and a clenching and unclenching fist. He works his jaw.

There’s no shortage of park benches, and so Steve guides them to one a few yards down, and they sit across from an older woman feeding the pigeons. Despite his current state, Bucky realizes that he loves that New York is full of clichés. He does his best to focus on her, her hands, the seeds. He tries to count the birds circling her thick ankles.

“You doin’ alright, Buck?” Steve asks kindly, nervously, and Bucky can feel Steve’s gaze on him even as he watches the woman scatter her breadcrumbs. He’s focusing on getting his breathing under control.

“I’m not a good person, Steve,” he says finally, shaking his head. “All this time, that I’ve been getting so much help from so many people, I thought...there’d be something good underneath. A nice statue under the marble if you just chipped away at the right places. But I’m just... not. I don’t know if I’m worth all this.” He gestures outwardly toward everything and nothing.

“Hey,” Steve says, wrapping a muscular arm around Bucky’s shoulders in a way that doesn’t feel wholly platonic. “You really do know how to sell yourself short.”

“If you knew what I’d done in this park...” Bucky tries, pulling himself away from Steve’s embrace unsuccessfully.

“If you saw yourself the way _I_ see you,” Steve counters, cutting him off. “You’d know that you’re an honest, sincere, hilarious, good-lookin’ punk who needs to stop feeling sorry for himself and let people love him. And take care of him.” He raises his eyebrows, a crooked smile pulling his mouth up to one side. “The past is the past, Buck. All that matters is how you go forward. Don’t think we don’t notice that you’re the one person who visits Clint without fail, or who picks up overtime at the shop when money’s looking tight, or who takes Dodge for a walk every night. And I know you’re the one who’s been organizing the library. And the one who showed Luke around.”

Bucky just sits there and glows. He doesn’t cry, but for a second there he feels like he might.

“C’mon, jerk. Let’s get out of here,” is all Bucky can manage, a lump in his throat. Steve pulls his arm away from Bucky’s shoulders, which leaves them feeling too light and too exposed, like he needs that weight to hold him to the earth, else he might float away. But they’re walking again. Bucky tries not to concentrate on how badly he wants to close the space between them.

They do pizza at Midwood’s, which sends Bucky’s tastebuds over the moon and down memory lane at the same time. They stop in another coffee shop, and Steve pulls out a _sketchbook_ of all things and leans back, observing Bucky as if to draw him.

“How am I just finding out about this now?” Bucky admonishes when Steve lets him flip through the notebook. Steve is incredible; his art genuinely takes Bucky’s breath away. The portraits of the housemates back home (home?) tug at his heart fondly. Wanda, looking like she’s ready to kill someone. Peter, grinning hugely, ecstatic to have anyone’s attention. Jessica, asleep on the love seat. Rhodes, concentrating on an IKEA cabinet he’s putting together with his tongue poking out.

After much fruitless arguing, he lets Steve draw him, with his long hair brushing his shoulders, his one arm, the coffee he brings habitually to his lips. There is no feeling quite like being the object of Steve’s attention. Steve sketches slow, looking suddenly serious as his eyes comically roam between Bucky and the page, as if watching a slow-motion tennis match. Between strokes, sometimes he smiles at Bucky – just this real sunrise smile, nice and true. Bucky wants to check his pulse, pinch himself – something to assure him that this is all real. He asks Steve to sign and date it, when he finishes.

Later, at a touristy tear-down bodega, Bucky buys Steve an I “heart” NY mug. “You’re the tackiest guy I've ever met, how do you not have this mug yet? Honestly I'm disappointed in you."

“You’re a piece o’ work, you know that?” Steve’d grinned back. Bucky makes him carry the mug the rest of the day. It’ll be a good one for Steve’s collection.

They end the evening with Coney Island, another nostalgic favorite betwixt them. Steve complains about a time his friends made him ride the Cyclone, so naturally, Bucky makes him ride the Cyclone. As he predicted, Steve gets sick, and Bucky almost feels bad, except that it gives him an excuse to rub Steve’s back _and_ give him shit, which are admittedly his two favorite hobbies. Steve has a good attitude through it all, and there’s no bad blood as they move about the fair grounds in the crisp October night, pounding funnel cake under the twinkling fair lights as dark settles in around them.

“I went to a funny sci-fi expo here, once,” Bucky confides as they’re leaving the park side by side, shoulders or hips occasionally knocking in a way that doesn’t feel completely unintentional.

“Oh yeah?” Steve says, mouth full of funnel cake. Flakes of powdered sugar get caught in his scruff. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, it was neat. All futuristic and stuff. Mom took me when I was a kid. Said there’d be flyin’ cars by now,” Bucky says. “Alas, I guess.”

“No flyin’ cars in the future. But we got other good things, I think,” Steve says thoughtfully, the funnel cake swallowed as he thinks more seriously.

“Like what?”

“Memes.” At that, Bucky actually throws his head back in feigned frustration. “Kidding, Buck,” Steve laughs. “We got watches that are computers, though. Gay marriage is legal. We’re harnessing energy from the friggin’ sun. Robots are on Mars. The future is bright, my friend.” Steve claps him on the shoulder, and Bucky imagines fondly a sugary handprint on the back of his jacket.

 _Sure is_ , Bucky thinks to himself.

Finally, they wander back toward Natasha’s, laughing and enjoying the lightness of a day away from the endless grind they subject themselves to back in Detroit. It’s a kind of paradise, laughing with Steve.

It’s later than Bucky realized; Nat’s already in her room, and all the lights are off. She’s left them a note about helping themselves to anything and that she’d see them in the morning.

In retrospect, Bucky realizes it’s almost _too_ convenient.

Steve toes off his shoes at the door and Bucky follows suit, tiptoeing in their socked feet around the apartment, but everything’s funnier when you’re supposed to be quiet, and Bucky finds himself clamping his hand over his mouth every time Steve does something funny. Which is often. For his impressive build, the man is a klutz and a goofball and also quick to make dad jokes. But they try their bests to keep quiet for Natasha’s sake – tomorrow’s a workday after all.

They brush their teeth in the kitchen sink, which feels domestic and does unfair things to Bucky’s poor heart. With silent nods, they part, Bucky drifting into Nat’s room and wincing as the door creaks, and Steve making little noise as he settles himself onto the couch.

Bucky can’t sleep. His mind is buzzing with the day they’ve had, the way New York has a way of seeping into his bones. He loves how it all came rushing back to him, like he never left, or at least, didn't lose a part of himself in the process. In his head, he tries to distinguish moments when he and Steve blurred the lines between platonic and romantic. Was it weird that they split the funnel cake? Was it weird that Bucky let Steve draw him in the coffee shop? Was _he_ being weird? Overthinking is definitely one of Bucky Barnes’ specialties. He absentmindedly fingers his dog tags, playing with the familiar cord with his right hand as he replays each and every detail. Wondering. Wishing.

But his resolve begins to soften. Honestly, so _what_ if Steve’s in an authoritative role in his life right now? So what if Steve’s a rule-follower and this feels so far past rule-breaking that he’s starting to feel guilty before he’s even done anything? So what if Steve thinks too highly of Bucky and he can never truly live up to Steve's expecations? So what if Steve doesn't know every ugly thing he's done, and every ugly thing that's been done to him? So what if it doesn’t work out?

Brooklyn is Switzerland. They’re not in Detroit. There is no halfway house here, no Peter to walk in on them or Wade to tease them or Sam to advise against this. They’re not addict and social worker; they are Bucky and Steve, two men watering a garden of fondness but too scared to harvest anything from it. Here, there is no power imbalance. There are no nosy housemates. There is no curfew. They are bathed in the lawlessness of New York City, and the only thing between them is Natasha’s door and their own obliviousness.

Tonight, they’re just a couple of guys from Brooklyn.

Suddenly, Bucky decides to get a glass of water. Not that he needs one – he most certainly doesn’t, in fact – but Steve is beyond the door, and Bucky yearns to be close to him, a hand on a chest, a too-close breath. Even just being in the same room would be enough. They’ve been so, so stupid.

Careful not to jostle the bed, Bucky gets up, one cautious limb at a time, and quietly slips out of Nat's room in only boxers and a white T-shirt. In the dark, he can’t tell if Steve is awake or not, so he goes to the sink, quietly fumbling around for a glass.

“Buck? That you?”

His heart stops.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He hadn’t expected his plan to _work_.

“Yeah, Steve, just gettin’ a drink of water.” He has to clear his throat, it’s so full of nerves.

Steve seems to be on the same wavelength – or maybe Bucky just wants him to be – but nonetheless, he gets up from the couch and joins Bucky in the kitchen, shirtless and donning gray sweats (the same pair, Bucky realizes, that he woke up in that first morning at Steve’s all those months ago). It takes all his self control to not rake his eyes all over Steve’s exposed chest.

He does, inadvertently, lick his lips, however.

“Buck...” Steve starts, ducking his head and running a hand through his already tussled hair. "I...I've gotta tell ya..."

“I know.”

Bucky closes the cabinet, not even pulling a glass out of it. He’s not thirsty anymore. Not really.

Steve is hovering closer, not even pretending that he had something to do in the kitchen. He has some _one_ to do in the kitchen, by the look in his eyes – he’s looking at Bucky like he’s the last man on Earth, and it sends a shiver down Bucky’s spine, to be the recipient of that undivided attention, the object of those deep blue eyes. He wasn’t even aware that he was stepping toward Steve until they’re mere inches apart. He can feel Steve’s breath mingling with his, skin suddenly hot and heart pounding away beneath his ribs. Christ, he’s already rock hard in his boxers. No point now in hiding it.

They move teasingly slow and then wait, poised, those charged inches apart; it dawns on him in the back of his head that they’re giving each other an out. This is a chance to say no, to turn around and go back to bed.

Bucky wants to say something, unsure how to get from A to B, a hair’s breadth away from the strong jaw he’s been admiring ever since he woke up. How to close the gap between them without startling Steve. How to make the leap. He's gotten so used to saying no all these months that he's forgotten how to say yes. His heart races in his chest and his palms sweat and then–

And then Steve is _on_ him, gentle but swift and everywhere at once. He grabs Bucky by the small of his back and presses forward, backing Bucky into the counter and slamming their mouths together, waiting for the rest of their bodies to line up, hips swaying against each other in a way that makes all the air in his lungs evaporate, _whooshing_ out of Bucky in a sound that’s far less innocent than he intended. Steve’s somehow harder than he is, and just the weight of Steve pressing up against him is enough to make him twitch in his boxers. It elicits a groan from Steve that makes his blood simmer in his stomach.

After the initial surprise, Bucky kisses back with hunger, licking everything he’s ever wanted to say into the inside of Steve’s mouth. It’s wet and hot, sloppy and unexpected, and Steve’s hands are everywhere, already hiking up Bucky’s shirt, beginning to explore his waistband, like he's been thinking about it for a while now.

But Steve pulls back – not all the way back, they’re still attached at the hips, thank God – but he breathes, looking at Bucky and almost panting, pupils blown in such a different way than Bucky’s have been this past year. He likes the way Steve looks when he’s flushed. Hungry. Wanting.

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve says incredulously, and then cracks the widest smile Bucky’s seen yet. “You’re an amazing human bein’, you know that? I feel so lucky right now.”

Bucky’s too overwhelmed to say anything witty back, so he just bumps his hips forward into Steve’s, an acknowledgement. A _me, too_.

“I’m uh, a virgin, you know,” Steve says, rubbing the back of his neck nervously with one hand, the other is still clasping the now sweaty small of Bucky’s back, unwilling to let go, and Bucky’s glad for it. But Steve chews his lip, embarrassed and seductive all at once.

“No shit,” Bucky laughs. Just laughs, with disbelief, that this happened, is happening, that right at this _very moment_ Steve is pressing himself into all of Bucky’s spaces. Filling the holes. Stopping up the leaks. And damn. Steve sure as hell doesn’t kiss like a virgin.

Steve still looks unsure, so Bucky rolls his eyes and swoops in for another peck. Then another, reassuring kisses that say everything Steve seems to need to hear. And then they’re kissing again, more playful and less urgent this time, stealing kisses and smiling into them. Their teeth clack once and Steve squeezes his ass with both hands and makes his skin prickle _everywhere_. Bucky cups Steve's scruffy face with his own hand. They slide against each other, not quite thrusting but certainly picking up a rhythm. Bucky’s hips would follow Steve’s anywhere right now, into the very jaws of death.

They’re being loud, and he knows it, but can’t be compelled to worry about it at this exact moment. Steve grips under his thighs and hoists him up on the counter. With a look that is positively sinful, Steve spreads Bucky’s knees apart and fits himself between them, filling the entire space between Bucky’s legs and letting his hands work Bucky’s thighs, his mouth busy and wet. Bucky stops them a second, puts his hand under Steve’s chin, just to look at that face. Steve can’t take it anymore, he picks Bucky up completely, wrapping those dangling legs around his waist, and transfers them to the couch, laying Bucky back-down and crawling right on top of him, undeterred.

“ _Mmh_ , Steve,” Bucky moans, squirming pleasantly beneath him. There’s so much _yes_.

“Hello, boys,” Natasha says suddenly, making Steve jump as she marches in wearing only a T-shirt and thong. “Don't mind me!” she chimes, grabbing a jar of peanut butter from a cabinet and a spoon. “Oh, and the couch is fine but for the love of god, please please clean it up when you're done.”  With that, she gives them a dramatic wink coupled with a shit-eating grin, and she disappears back into her bedroom. The light stays on, but the telltale sounds of Netflix start to waft out of her room. She turns up the volume politely.

Bucky rolls his eyes and buries his face in Steve’s neck, embarrassed. He likes this position, beneath Steve Rogers. He can feel the rumbles of Steve’s chuckle, and it gives Steve access to his neck, which he takes full advantage of. 

“You sure you're a virgin?” he quips to Steve, though the last syllable is lost in a hitching breath when Steve fucking _nibbles_ at him.

“You tell me,” Steve whispers into his collar bone. And then Steve’s kissing his way down Bucky’s chest, which starts to make Bucky panic, realizing his shirt has come off and his scars – war- and self-induced – are being observed quite thoroughly by the one person Bucky’s trying to impress, each one receiving special attention from Steve, nips and licks and kisses.

Bucky's tense for a moment, suddenly aware of every square inch of his skin, but Steve tells him sweet-nothings, tells him he’s beautiful against his skin, and it’s enough.

Finally, when he gets to Bucky’s waistband, Steve looks up the length of Bucky’s chest, eyes curious. He’s asking permission, Bucky realizes a second too late, his body already twitching, leg muscles tensing and ass clenching, to go down on him.

_Fuck._

“Fuck,” Bucky moans, nodding feverishly. _Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes_. Steve hasn’t even pulled his boxers off and his hips thrust up with a mind of their own.

Even then, it takes Steve too long to get the boxers off and over his erection, which stands up nice and tall. Steve traces it once with a finger, curious and slow. A virgin, after all. Bucky shivers, pushing up against Steve’s hand and whining, which makes Steve grin that _I’m-doing-this-to-another-person_ grin. It’s a dangerous grin – Bucky can already tell that Steve’s going to make him beg for it.

Steve bites at his thighs, licks there, avoiding his throbbing cock so _unfairly_. He rakes his nails up and down Bucky’s thighs, dropping tiny kisses and little licks to the length of his cock, one hand cupping his balls and rolling them gently, excruciatingly slowly. Bucky’s already falling apart above him.

“God, Steve, Jesus, _Jesus_ ,” Bucky sputters when Steve _finally_ takes him into his mouth, sloppy and unpracticed but eager enough to make up for it. Bucky can’t help it; the pre-come is leaking out of him and he’s got a fistful of couch cushion clenched in his hand, and his hips are already stuttering of their own accord. Steve bobs up and down, occasionally having to pull off and try again, but his throat is hot and tight and Bucky’s in deep, both literally and figuratively.

“Oh, oh God, _Steve_ –” It’s supposed to be a warning, it really was, but it’s too late. Bucky’s entire body cosmos into the next century, and he’s fucking seeing stars as he comes into Steve’s mouth, who, the goddamn gentleman that he is, takes it like a man and swallows, watching Bucky with admiration the entire time and finally pulling off and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Bucky collapses into the pillows behind him, breathing loudly and eyes rolling.

Below him, Steve is fucking radiant.

He crawls back up Bucky’s body, careful of Bucky’s now limp, wet dick, though his own erection is still hard and _there_  in his sweatpants against Bucky’s body-turned-noodles. It’s the best orgasm he’s ever had, hands down.

“Hi,” Steve says, folding his arms on Bucky’s chest and resting his head on his hands, cheeky and clearly pleased with himself. Bucky throws his arm over his eyes, preserving the last waves of the orgasm that ripple through him.

“You are too good at that,” Bucky says, unabashed awe in his voice. “You are...something else, Rogers.”

Steve stays there, just looking at Bucky, poking him a little with his hips.

“This is the part where you come up here and kiss me, idiot,” Bucky demands after most of his Earth-shattering bliss has passed. He still feels moony and weightless, but his eyebrows stitch together suddenly, upset. He wants Steve kissing him and he wants it now.

“I thought you’re not supposed to kiss after a blowjob,” Steve says, looking genuinely confused. Bucky remembers that Steve doesn’t watch porn because, y’know, he’s Steve.

“Urban legend,” Bucky mutters, and pulls Steve up into a kiss, tasting himself and feeling warm. There's something wordlessly tender about the kiss, like an entire conversation passes between them, and Bucky closes his eyes into it. Steve’s massive, so built and strong, a few inches taller than Bucky, but his weight on top of Bucky is immeasurably comforting. Bucky wants to bury himself beneath him for a while.

Of course, he doesn’t want to leave Steve hanging; Bucky starts squirming, ready to return the favor and starting to suck toward Steve’s nipple, but Steve stops him, looking embarrassed about what he wants to say next.

“You can tell me,” Bucky says before Steve’s even started to talk.

“I...wanted...I was wondering if I could get off just riding you, tonight. If that’s okay?”

Bucky balks. _If that’s okay_. At this point, he could fill novels – nay, libraries – with things that it would be okay for Steve to do to him.

So Steve kisses him, and he kisses back, and this time it’s gentle and slow. Steve whispers his name and Bucky says, “I’m here, Steve. I’m here.” He rocks into him while he can, but before long Steve is grinding away, doing what feels good against his own skin and pulsing against Bucky, who kisses and coos beneath him, letting Steve get carried away with himself. By the time Steve is falling apart on top of him, Steve’s holding himself up by his arms so he can look at Bucky and say his name as their friction and skin slapping against each other makes him completely lose himself, shuddering beautifully in the darkness. Just watching Steve orgasm almost makes Bucky come again.

"Baby,  _baby_ ," Steve whines against him, face contorting in the low light coming in through the window, hands on either side of Bucky's shoulders on the couch. Bucky gets one last  _Steve_ in before Steve makes a mess across his stomach. 

Steve looks down at him in utter amazement, like he has just won the Nobel prize, and struggles to find words, his wet lips hanging open.

"C'mere," Bucky instructs instead, reaching two fingers up to stroke Steve's cheek. "C'mere, you."

"Bucky," Steve half-smiles, lowering himself down until they're chest to chest, sharing soft, disbelieving kisses on Natasha's couch, cramped and perfect.

"Thank you," Bucky says, and means it as Steve curls up on top of him. He nuzzles into Steve's chest, and their fingers interlock.

"I'm just glad you stayed," Steve whispers back, his thumb just barely sweeping against the back of Bucky's hand.

Despite being the bigger of the two, Steve falls asleep on top of Bucky, completely naked. Their arms are wrapped around each other, and they wake up in the exact same position.

 

They both pretend to be asleep when Natasha struts in Friday morning, making the usual pot of coffee and pouring herself a bowl of cereal. If finding two naked men curled up together on her couch with dried cum on their chests phases her, she doesn’t show it. She even whistles a tune, something pop and awful that Bucky knows Steve would hate, as she grabs her shoulder bag and does up the complicated buckles on her jacket.

As she grabs her keys on her way out the door, Bucky could swear he hears a snicker and something that sounds suspiciously like “Nice butt.” And then she’s gone, and the apartment, and the city, and the world, are theirs.

\---

There’s morning sex, because of course there’s morning sex, and it’s great, but what Bucky treasures most is the look that won’t leave Steve’s face all morning. He’s ecstatic, his every move saying _finally_. He steals chaste kisses from Bucky as he makes eggs and practically skips around the kitchen. He literally looks like a Disney prince on the verge of breaking into song. To Bucky’s pleasure, Steve makes a point to _not_ put his clothes back on, floating around on cloud nine, completely exposed. Trusting. Bucky’s put his clothes back on, which Steve definitely notices and makes an unintentional face at, but hey. Not everyone moves at the same pace. The morning is too bright for all of that darkness.

It takes Bucky a second to realize why all of this feels so unfamiliar; nobody he’s ever slept with to date has been there when he woke up.

They do, _unfortunately_ , have plans for the day. Bucky’s surgery for attaching the prototype prosthetic is tomorrow, and he needs to see his family beforehand. Regrettably, they get dressed, though Steve stays close and never fails to make a point of delivering reassuring touches, whether it’s on the waist as he passes him or a pat on the shoulder. It gives Bucky goosebumps, and a smile is never far from his face.

 

Their moms are buried in different graveyards – Bucky had wondered if they might be in the same plot, but his Ma is in the Jewish cemetery, and Steve’s mom is over at the Catholic Church.

He remembers the day they lowered her pine box into the ground, threw dirt on it. He and his sister held hands, he knows, and he wore a torn black ribbon on his lapel. His dad didn’t shower for a whole week – a proper _shiva_ – and Bucky always regretted not mourning properly. But he and his sister were teenagers. Being cool meant so much more at that time. His dad went to temple every single day that year. The man taught Bucky what commitment meant.

He wasn’t sure if he and Steve should go on these visits together or separate, but Steve answers his question with a gentle squeeze of his hand – and doesn’t let go. They’ll worry about labels, and going home, and what the others will think another time. Today, they will hold hands in Brooklyn, and they will visit their mothers, together. Despite their rather morbid plans for the day, Bucky can’t help the bubbling sense of hope that sets up camp in his chest.

 

Steve cries; Bucky doesn’t. There’s a part of him that’s still numb. A part of him ashamed to stand before his mom, knowing she would be so hurt to see the track marks running up his arm, the scars on his chest, to know how many times he woke up to find he had pissed himself, to know that he hadn’t spoken to his sister in over a year. She would be confused about Steve, this strong, moral man who somehow has developed romantic feelings for her son, something Bucky knows she wouldn’t have understood but wouldn’t have minded, either. He misses synagogue and her gentle foot stepping lightly on his whenever he took his Yarmulke off as a little boy, shaking her head silently at him. But still smiling. Always smiling, his Ma. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s getting better, doing better, being better. He lays a bouquet of white roses on her grave and thinks, _I love you, Ma_ and he and Steve turn away.

Visiting Steve’s mom is strange; there’s a finality to her small headstone, a realization that all of Steve’s family is right here in this little 3 by 6 plot. Steve’s a bastard, no father to his name, no little brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles that he can recall. When Bucky asks, Steve says he’s not interested in looking up his family tree or doing one of those dumb 21st century 23&me tests. “Family’s a whole lot more than blood, Buck,” he says wisely, observing his mother’s grave peacefully with their hands entwined. The tears fall, and Steve talks aloud to his mother, which Bucky didn’t expect. He tells her about his halfway house like a parent bragging about their children on back-to-school night. He tells her about each and every housemate, how they’re doing. He tells her about Bucky, about how he knows now that he likes men and he’s found one that he knows she would’ve loved. Bucky leans his head on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve wipes away the tears that start to fall, his voice never losing its confidence, and again, they turn and leave.

Dinner is with Bucky’s Dad and sister, and her fiancé, over at Bucky’s apartment – the one he grew up in, at least. Steve offers to go elsewhere for dinner, or take Natasha out, or something, but Bucky shakes his head no. He wants Steve to meet his family. And it stings, a little, knowing he can never meet Steve’s. Perhaps that’s what makes it more important than ever.

Bucky’s dad is a reserved man with a bit of a drinking problem; things were never quite the same after Bucky’s mom passed and Bucky got shipped off to war in the same year. He’s burly with forgiving blue eyes – the same as Bucky’s – with dark hair showing signs of balding.

Caleb and Becca are clearly in the honeymoon stage, but instead of making Bucky want to vomit, it makes something like joy curl in his chest. She’s happy. She’s found someone who loves her unconditionally, who balances her and makes her smile. As a big brother, there’s not much more he can ask for in the man who wants to marry his baby sister. She’s elated to have Bucky over, and though Caleb did all the cooking, she helps bring the dishes out to the table, doting on their aging father and smiling at him and Steve at every chance she gets. She’s the only one who notices them holding hands under the table during dessert (they'll tell Bucky's father another day, when things aren't so new and confusing) and she corners Bucky after dinner while he’s washing the dishes and the rest of the men talk politics in the living room.

“You like him,” she says, matter-of-fact. He sighs, attempting to look annoyed at his baby sister for getting involved in his romance, but he just can’t. He gives her a toothy, breathless smile.

“You _love_ him,” she corrects, eyes wide and mouth opening in surprise. Bucky shakes his head, laughing. “You do. You love Steve.”

“It might be happening, yes,” he admits, scrubbing at a dish that’s already clean.

She claps her hands together. “Shit I am _here_ for.” He rolls his eyes.

Becca is extra nice to Steve for the rest of the evening.

They all catch up, Bucky trying to tell his dad that he’s on the mend in a way that doesn’t break his old man’s heart. His father was the least in the loop of them all, not understanding Bucky’s oppressive depression or PTSD or the fact that he self-medicated with opiates and couldn’t get off of them. But Bucky tries to close some of the gaps between them, and listens to his dad talk about the family business and the little to-do’s he has around the house. Bucky knows that his dad telling him about the leaky shower head and the fact that he needs to replace the microwave door handle is his way of saying he loves him. Becca shares that she’s going back to finish her degree, and their dad cheers, popping open a bottle of champagne that Steve and Bucky politely abstain from. Antoinette, the gray fur ball that she is, curls up in his lap as he sits on the floor with the news on in the background, and when he and Steve finally make to leave, his heart is full and his (and Steve's) hands full of leftovers. The family make plans to say goodbye to him post-op before he and Steve head back to Detroit, and hugs are exchanged, and Bucky leaves wondering how he went from having nothing to having it all in such a short span.

"I like your family a whole lot, Buck," Steve tells him on the way back to Natasha's. "You think they liked me?"

"Maybe too much," Bucky laughs, though of course it's not true. There's just no such thing.

\---

Bucky wakes up falling again, blinking rapidly back to reality with his heart thudding and his lungs without any room. He cries out and actually falls off of Steve on the couch and onto the floor, a series of bumped knees and a faceful of hardwood. But Steve is there – a little sleepy and befuddled, but there – and he helps Bucky back onto the couch and calls him baby and lets him be the little spoon, holding onto him close and petting his hair and delivering soft kisses until Bucky falls asleep with someone watching his back.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, THANKS to those of you who have been patient with this bad boy (and by bad boy, I mean the story itself lol). Lots of crazy life changes and also annoying formatting issues put me behind schedule.
> 
> So here's the last installment. I'm kind of in love with this 'verse, though, so I'm thinking maybe some interludes? There's just no shortage of scenes from this cast.

Time has gotten away from him; Bucky was so worried about pleasing his father, so smitten with whatever’s happening between him and Steve, so absorbed in the logistics of travel and the nostalgia of the city that it shocks his entire system when he wakes up and it’s Saturday.

How is it already Saturday?

Steve and Natasha tread carefully around him in the apartment; either that, or they’ve all mutually agreed that it’s way too fucking early in the morning for smalltalk. Either way, it’s quiet in a heavy sort of way, and for a split second Bucky wishes he had something to soothe the awkwardness. But he doesn’t do that anymore. Hmph.

Steve and Nat eat toast and drink coffee guiltily – as per his long instruction sheet from Pepper, Bucky’s not allowed to eat anything pre-op. His stomach growls. It makes the pangs of _want_ stronger, and he cracks his knuckles, scratches a little at his chest.

After a long period of zoning out, Bucky is broken from his whirling thoughts with a single word: “Ready?”

Nat walks with them along the sidewalk, the click of her heels surprisingly grounding as Bucky follows with his head down and his hand in his pocket. It’s silly, hiding as if he’s going to be recognized – he hardly knows anyone in this neighborhood anymore. Brooklyn’s changed. But still, he’s not sure he’s ready for the world to notice him. Eventually, Natasha breaks off to run errands, leaving him with a kiss on the cheek and an almost maternal look in her turquoise eyes, her lips turning up at the corners. She squeezes his bad shoulder, wishes him luck, and walks briskly away. Steve continues in the direction of Stark Tower, an eyesore of the city in Bucky’s opinion, and Bucky follows wordlessly, a step behind.

The glass-and-silver building seems to grow before their eyes until they’re directly underneath it, their eyes following its massive walls up to where Bucky is convinced it does, in fact, scrape the sky. No amount of steadying breaths could prepare him before he steps inside.

The guy at the front desk of Stark Industries makes him sign in, then gives him a temporary ID and says, “Right this way, sir,” and leads him to a silver elevator that only goes up.

It’s really happening.

He feels like his lungs are full of cotton, like he’s inhaling but there’s no room for the oxygen he’s trying to gulp down. What the hell is a bum like him – a college dropout who’s killed men overseas and fell into one of New York City’s many cracks – doing in a place like this? It’s too clean, too airtight. Professional and fluorescent. Too modern for someone still catching up to this century. They scan their goddamn _retinas_ to move through the hallways and between intimidating sets of silver double doors. He’s a mechanic in Detroit and he doesn’t belong.

Steve is awkward and helpless, his eyes wild as he stresses over how to make Bucky feel better, which only closes his throat more. But he has his anxiety semi-under control again by the time he’s off the elevator and has counted to ten. At least it’s manageable enough to go have a conversation with the people who are about to affix him with a new appendage. Jesus. Steve looks stricken, upset that he wasn’t able to help; in the back of his mind, Bucky makes a mental note that he and Steve, if they’re ever going to work in real life, have a lot of work to do.

Pepper meets them in the hallway of one of the top floors, and instantly she’s got an assistant kindly but definitively leading a very fidgety Steve away. For some reason, Bucky wants to say goodbye – a touch of the hands, a familiar clap on the shoulder, a kiss, even – but Steve’s already being guided up a stairwell, looking back over his shoulder repeatedly, and Bucky can’t get his voice to come out. It’s weird to be left alone with these strangers, with his hair combed and his Salvation Army suit in full view; he feels very, very naked without Steve.

Ms. Potts is even prettier in person and wastes no time jumping into details of the operation, the accommodations, his room, their agreed upon conditions. She compliments his suit; he’ll have to remember to thank Wanda later, even though the thing is itchy and foreign. Pepper’s smarter than him by leaps and bounds, so a lot of what she rattles off goes over his head, but the confidence in her voice does wonders for his escalating anxiety. He follows her like a lost puppy, the click of her heels a step ahead of him and blazing his trail. They go through another – final – pair of steel double doors, and enter a room that can only be described as a laboratory, what with its levers and buttons, tables and machines, holograms ( _Holograms?!_ ) and scattered papers.

Tony Stark himself is in the lab, holding what is to be Bucky’s limp, bodiless arm in his hands – certainly a strange view to walk in on – and talks Bucky’s ear off about circuit boards and metal conductivity. Bucky can hardly focus long enough to hear what Stark is saying over the ringing in his ears, and probably wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway, but he does interrupt at one point to ask if it can get wet. He wants to know if he’ll be able to take a shower.

“What– yes, yes it can, James, are you listening?” Tony says, eyebrows scrunching together.

“Yes, sir.” Bucky feels like he’s going to be sick. The room is so metallic, and there are no windows. It’s like he just stepped into one of his pulp novels, except it’s much less _Star Trek_ and much more _oppressive dystopia_.

“Okay, good. So–”

It goes on like this. Steve comes back into the room at some point, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee for himself. No liquids for Barnes. His stomach twists again. Somewhere in the back of his head, Bucky surmises they might’ve sent Steve in to calm him down, but the furrow of worry between Steve’s brows is only doing the opposite.

“Alright, champ, your doctors are coming in now. I know you said no anesthesia but we do have it on hand just in case–” Stark begins, talking fast and making moves to exit what is now being converted to an operation room. Doctors start walking in in scrubs, pushing trays with various tools on them into the room. A light is lowered from God-knows-where.

“No anesthesia?” Steve asks, interrupting, his blue eyes wide and piercing. “Bucky...”

“No,” Bucky says, resolve showing in his voice for the first time all day. He’s seated, now, on a metal table in the middle of the room.

“But–”

“It’s _his_ decision, Mr. Rogers,” Pepper butts in, and Bucky could kiss her.

“Bucky, c'mon, this is crazy–”

“And so was a year and a half long heroin addiction, Steve. I’m not doing it.”

“Heroin addict, huh?” Stark butts in, but Steve and Bucky ignore him.

Steve shakes his head, looking like he’s not sure if he should be mad or proud. It seems he lands somewhere in between. “You’re incredible, you know that? Incredibly _stupid_ ,” he rolls his eyes lovingly, “But incredible.” Steve kisses Bucky on the forehead and is ushered out of the room. Tony and Pepper exchange a quick but noticeable glance of surprise, but if they have any problems with it, they don’t voice them. Instead, they continue to talk at him, faces too close and too loud, and Bucky forces himself to breathe and plays with the belt loop of his pants to ground himself; then Tony and Pepper too leave the room, and Bucky is alone with three white-masked doctors, and he can’t help but feeling like he’s in a horror movie. Even though the room is ice-cold, he sweats, palm gliding on the smooth metal surface of the table.

Everything happens quickly. The doctors introduce themselves. Fluorescent lights are lowered and brightened. He’s strapped to the table, and the helplessness of it takes him back to Afghanistan, and he knows his eyes are wide with fear as his heart races. He has to remove his suit jacket, shirt, under shirt. They start explaining what they’re doing. _I’m sterilizing the scalpel. I’m writing on you in marker, don’t worry, it’ll wash off. This here is where we’ll make the first incision_. They numb him with something – he can already tell it won’t be nearly enough. They ask him to turn away, face his right side. He shouldn’t watch. They ask him to relax. He can’t be too tense. For fuck’s sake.

And then there is white-hot pain in his shoulder and he’s screaming at the top of his lungs, pushing against the well-placed bonds that hold him down. One of the doctors has to sit on top of him to calm him down, and somehow the weight helps him concentrate. It’s a blur of pain, doctors calling out to one another and video monitors crowding in on him. Stark’s voice is omnipresent over some kind of loudspeaker system, and someone who Stark calls J.A.R.V.I.S. talks with him, interrupting for the occasional tip. It’s like having sportscasters cover the highlights of his surgery in real time. Bucky counts minutes, and when minutes get too long, he counts seconds. 4,971. 4,972. They give him something – it might be his own undershirt – to bite down on, and the screaming stops, but he can feel the veins in his neck pulsing and the wild in his eyes. He’s probably popped a blood vessel or two by now.

He looks. He can’t _not_ look, though the doctors seem concerned. It’s hard to say, though – all he can see is their eyes, faces covered in hygienic masks.

He concentrates on the lead doctor’s eyes. She appears to be of Indian descent, though he can’t be sure and can hardly remember the sound of her voice from only moments ago. But she’s got deep brown, almond-shaped eyes and beautiful dark eyebrows that dance as she focuses, and they distract him from the fact that he can _see his bone right now_.

His flesh is absolutely on fire. The new tech is supposed to actually send and receive electric messages from the brain, and whatever it takes to make that happen hurts like nothing Bucky’s felt before...

Except Afghanistan. Except when he fell from the train, spent days laying in the hot sun, waiting. Bleeding. Sand and thirst and so much blood.

It could be worse. It could be worse. It could be worse.

This pain is at least comparable. He can feel every flap of skin, every layer of sinew they pull apart. There’s an unbearable amount of red. He doesn’t let up for one second of the seven-hour surgery, thrashing the entire time; it probably slows the doctors, but he knows he has to endure. No anesthesia. No painkillers. He’d rather this than lose another year of a life that keeps trying to erase itself. He does pass out for an hour in the middle of it all when the pain is too great; it’s unfortunate when he comes to again as a pain like lightning strikes through his left shoulder.

He screams his mother’s name. He screams for Becca, for Steve, even for his four-legged companion back in Detroit. His right hand clenches and unclenches as they attach the wires, run the electric shocks. They ask him to do things, which he somehow performs even under the stress. _Make a fist. Flex your index finger._ _Can you do that for me?_ He’s sweating – absolutely dripping in sweat, and his nails have carved bloody half-moons into his right thigh.

Finally, at the end of hour six, the Indian doctor tells him to hold his breath.

“Okay, James, this is the final step. I need you to be extra brave for me, just for thirty seconds. Can you give me thirty seconds of bravery?”

He nods, tears streaming from his eyes, the shirt still balled up in his mouth. He feels like he could gag, but there’s a momentary peace, a pause in the pain. The other two doctors are holding the metal arm in place; he’s instructed to lie very, very still.

“We’re going to set the arm,” she says calmly, kindly. He would like her very much if she hadn’t just spent five hours with her fingers scraping at his insides. “Alright, Smith, Dee, stay in place. There will be shouting. James, we’re going to cauterize the wound in three, two, one...”

His entire body tenses, from his feet curling to his head and neck convulsing as searing heat – an actual _flame_ for Christ’s sake – devours his shoulder, sealing his skin, raw and red, to the metal. He only feels it for a second, before the world goes black.

\---

He’s not allowed to wear a shirt when he wakes up, which is a much bigger issue than the searing stinging in the entire left side of his torso. Pain is something he’s used to; exposing his scars for the world to see is not.

The doctors all praise him when he blinks awake; their scrubs are drenched in his blood, their masks pulled down around their necks. The Indian doctor – Dr. Gupta, he remembers now without feeling like the walls are closing in on him – snaps off her rubber gloves and rests her long fingers on his good shoulder. “You are a good man, James. The surgery was more successful than we thought. This is going to help a lot of children.” Her hair is in a long braid down the middle of her back, and it swings like a pendulum as she leaves the room.

“Bathroom break,” comes the voice that Bucky has come to know is a computer named J.A.R.V.I.S. “She hasn’t been able to go since you went into the operation, sir.”

“Barnes, I’m impressed,” Tony says, entering the room in person this time, wearing a crisp suit that feels out of place in this gory science fiction. He has a proud-dad look on his face that makes Bucky look away. “The surgery went beautifully. You’re a real champ. Mind if I take a look?” Bucky can already tell Tony is itching to play with the arm.

“Gentle,” is all Bucky can muster. He clears his throat.

As expected, Tony tinkers with it like a kid who just opened up a Lego set on Christmas morning. Bucky tries not to gasp at the pain.

“Can you feel this?” he asks again and again, applying varying degrees of pressure to different parts of the arm. “How about now? Now?” Bucky’s too tired to be annoyed, so he answers Tony complicitly. Underneath the exhaustion, there _is_ an amazement growing. Already, he can twitch the fingers of the thing; his arm’s in a sling to make sure he doesn’t move it around while the scar tissue forms, but he can still feel everything. He...he has an arm again. It’s a little bulky, and his weight feels off balance as he overcompensates, and sometimes it moves a second later than he wanted it to, or stretches farther than he intended, but.

But. Bucky Barnes is whole again.

Finally, Stark gets out of his face. For their research, the doctors take pictures, and offer him pain medication one last time, which he declines with heavy heart, and then they too, leave him alone. He hopes that Steve will come through, but he doesn’t show; Bucky realizes he has absolutely no idea what time it is in this windowless room. Or how many surveillance cameras are trained on him, for that matter. It doesn’t take long after the parade of people has left him alone for him to drift into a riotous sleep, thrashing against his restraints as he falls, again.

\---

When Bucky wakes on what is presumably Sunday morning, he is very much _not_ alone. Stark and Pepper are there with what look like release forms for him to sign; Dr. Gupta is back, this time in civilian clothes with the same long braid down her back, though she wears glasses that look like they’re from the eighties; the guy from the front desk is there with a wheelchair; and thank fucking God, Steve and Nat are looking at him with what could only be called worry.

“Hi,” Bucky croaks from the table, not sure how he feels about waking up to an audience. He scrunches his nose, arches his back. He’s sore and on display.

“Buck,” Steve says, relieved and coming toward him excitedly, though he’s careful not to touch. Whether that’s because he’s afraid, or because of all the other people, Bucky’s not sure, and it bothers him.

At the same time, Stark says distractingly, “Welcome back to life, champ. How do you feel about the nickname, Cyborg?” Pepper elbows him in the ribs.

“ _Tony_ ,” she scolds.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Gupta asks, checking his chart even though she’s clearly off-duty. “Your vitals are looking good. You’re healthy as a horse, James. You must want to get up off of that table, though.” At that, she smiles, and it’s decided: he likes her.

“It aches,” he replies, looking at his newly scarred shoulder and poking it gently with the index finger of his right hand. “Is it...does it work?”

“You tell us,” Stark says, to which Dr. Gupta interrupts, side-eyeing Tony, “We don’t know yet, Mr. Barnes. We don’t want you moving the arm until we’re sure it’s healed correctly. I’m hoping we can video chat with you in the upcoming weeks to check its function, timing, stability. We know you’ll be able to lift things, open doors. I’m not sure how fine-tuned it’ll be. Will you be able to play guitar chords right away? Probably not.”

“ _Au contraire_ ,” Tony says, clearly taking offense at one of his inventions being doubted. He launches into a spiel about his tech and the successful tests on feral New York City cats that are now walking around neutered and with bionic forelegs.

“Come back in a couple months for readjustments, okay?” Dr. Gupta says in a friendly sort of way, stretching her hand out to shake. He takes it with his right hand. “Thanks for your courage, Mr. Barnes.” She touches Tony on the shoulder, then Pepper, and exits the room.

“We’ve got a plane to catch, Tony,” Pepper says then. They thank Barnes profusely for the opportunity to work with him and wish him well, then disappear into the elevator. The receptionist from the front desk stands there awkwardly, fingers tapping the handle of the wheelchair.

“Ready to go?” Steve asks, a small smile on his face. Bucky feels stricken – how is he already being moved out of here? Isn’t he supposed to, oh, sit in a hospital room for a couple days? Recover? But this is top-notch technology. If Stark thinks he’s ready to go home, who is he to question the man-genius of the twenty-first century? Besides, it’s not like he’s going to be on any kind of morphine drip anytime soon.

Steve and Nat help him into the chair, which he swears he doesn’t need, but he’s in pain, hasn’t walked in two days, and _did_ lose a lot of blood, so his friends win on that one; the Jeep is parked right outside. The receptionist waves them off, and they head back to Natasha’s to say goodbye and collect their things. Every pothole in the road irritates his shoulder, and he grimaces on the drive there, dreading the ride back to Detroit tonight. She can’t hug him, so she squeezes his good hand, and then squeezes his new metal one for good measure. He feels it like a tickle. He _feels_ it. That alone is enough to make a smile crack on his face. He has an arm again.

“Thanks for everything, Nat. Just, uh, thanks,” he tells her. They’re not ones for the touchy-feely, but he’ll be damned if he leaves New York without telling her she saved his life.

“No, Barnes. Thank you,” she says, kissing his cheek again through the passenger window. It suddenly strikes him that he’s her only friend. He’ll have to call more often, maybe have her out for the holidays.

Steve thanks her for her hospitality and waves from the driver’s side.

Before he and Steve take off, he just _has_ to ask her. “Nat, how the fuck do you know Tony freaking Stark?”

“I’m a double agent,” she sings into the window from the curb of her apartment building, her weight on her folded elbows as she leans into the car.

“For real?” he balks.

“You tell me,” she winks, then taps the car and struts back into her building, all red hair and hips and hell. Bucky rolls his eyes in amazement, then sucks in a sharp breath. He must have moved; it sends a shot of pain through his shoulder.

“You okay?” Steve asks, concerned. Bucky just nods, squeezing his eyes shut as the wave of pain rolls through him. It hurts like fucking hell. “We’ll drive slow,” Steve tries, feeling helpless again.

Bucky sleeps for most of the drive, overcome with pain and exhaustion. His body needs to recuperate; it begs him for rest. He wakes intermittently, though, at rest stops or when Steve changes lanes. They stop at a diner. Steve re-does his gauze and bandages in a gas station bathroom, undeterred by the oozing and blood of Bucky’s shoulder. He smiles, small and quaint, as he patches Bucky up in the men’s room. Bucky melts into the touch, the butterfly lightness of Steve’s careful fingers. There are some things he just can’t do by himself.

As they pass Cleveland, Bucky finally asks Steve something he’s been wondering.

“Would you do this for anyone in the house, Steve?” He bites his lip, not sure he wants to know the answer, whichever way Steve goes.

“Yes,” Steve says, slowly. He’s got one hand on the wheel, the other hanging out the window. “Yes, I would. Difference is, I _want_ to do it for you. I want to do it for a long, long time, Buck.”

“So what happens next? For us, I mean?” Bucky asks. He has no filter; not after his highly invasive surgery and their pilgrimage to Brooklyn and feeling Steve’s hard cock pressing into his back in the wee hours of the morning. There’s no time for holding back anymore. “What happens when we get back to the house? Or if... _when_ I beat this addiction, and I don’t need you the same as I did?”

Steve actually chuckles, like he’s not listening. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

Bucky turns his head to look at Steve, which sends a ripple of pain through his collar bone region; he masks his face though – whatever Steve is about to say is far more important than the latest twinge in his shoulder.

“Bucky, you idiot...I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

Steve takes his hand off the gear shift and places it on Bucky’s left thigh. Bucky covers Steve’s hand with his right, and he doesn’t have any more questions after that.

\---

The whole goddamn house is there to welcome them late Sunday night (really Monday morning); it appears Wade’s drawn little middle fingers all over Bucky’s _Welcome Home_ banner, and yet it wouldn’t be home without it. Scott and Peter are playing League in the living room, Wanda and Vision are arguing over Instagram filters for their latest post, Rhodes has a game of Euchre going at the dining room table. Everyone stops what they’re doing when the front door starts to jimmy, though, and there’s a slew of careful (and not-so-careful, _Christ_ , Bruce) hugs and teasing, (good) shoulder punches and admiration of the bionic arm. They tease him, call him a robot and the like. “That’s quite an upgrade, Soldier,” Wanda tells him playfully, squeezing the bionic bicep and giving him a sultry look before bursting into laughter. Of course, somewhere in the background, Sam and Steve are already talking business, catching up on the last five days. Steve appears to fist bump him for not letting anyone burn the house down, which Bucky catches out of the corner of his eye. Even after five days alone together, he can’t seem to take his eyes off Steve.

His bed rest lasts a week, and it’s miserable, but everyone seems overjoyed to have him back. They’ve made him a big get-well card that puts a lump in his throat in the best way. Wanda brushes his hair and gossips about how she thinks Vision is going to propose soon, and Bucky thinks that maybe a wedding is just what they need.

Everyone wants him to show off the arm, but no one is more excited about it than Peter, who posts about it on every social media platform known to man.

“Why does anyone need to see that on your LinkedIn?” Scott Lang asks as he passes by Bucky’s room, where Peter has set up a small photo shoot, even bringing in the lamps from the living room. Bucky must look like a grumpy old cat, amusing a smaller, enthusiastic kitten; it makes Scott grin. “Also, why do you have a LinkedIn? Aren’t you, like, twelve?”

“Fifteen,” Peter huffs. “And because it’s _sweet_ ,” he gushes. Bucky just shrugs.

Some of the people from his NA meetings send him flowers. The leader delivers them personally and tells him they’ll be sharing his anecdote about refusing narcotics for months. Bucky is careful – he explains to her that this was the right choice for _him_ , but pain meds and narcotics play important roles for people who suffer from chronic pain or have specialized needs. She tussles his hair. “You’ve grown a lot, Bucky. We’re real proud of you.” After a week, he gets to return to his meetings, pleasantly surprised that he actually misses them.

He does crave drugs, though. The week of bed rest takes him back to that horrible hellfire of withdrawals, and though he doesn’t vomit from the pain, he stumbles around nauseous for days. He can’t eat much, and the throbbing is too intense for sleep, so he gets dark circles under his eyes and loses ten pounds and wishes for something to dull the pain. It’s hard, knowing _just one_ Hydrocodone, just one Percocet, and his whole body would be at ease. When shares this with the NA group with tears in his eyes, a woman who’s only just joined grabs his hand, and he squeezes it.

Surprisingly, no one in the house seems phased by the way Steve acts around him now. No one asks why Steve’s been finding every excuse to touch Bucky, whether he’s readjusting a cushion or fixing his bandages. More surprisingly, no one questions why Steve has started sleeping downstairs in Bucky’s _room_. They also don’t ask about the quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kisses Steve’s been planting on Bucky’s forehead, shoulder, hand...

 _Hands_ , Bucky corrects and smiles to himself.

He asks Sam about it one evening when the two of them are alone in the kitchen sharing a pot of decaf and passing a cigarette between them, breaking the rules just a little after Sam’s undone the fire detector. He can probably tell that Bucky needs this, and with his workload, he could use it himself.

“Dude. We’ve known y’all were into each other since you woke up doe-eyed and didn’t run away from this place with your tail between your legs,” Sam says, making Bucky feel ridiculous. _Bucky_ didn’t even realize he liked Steve back then. ‘Course, he was on a different planet in those early days.

“Hey, I stayed for the right reasons,” Bucky defends, but he’s smiling. Sam hands him the cigarette – he’s still one-handed with the metal arm in the sling (which Wade has taken the liberty to cover in sharpie penises).

“Yeah, and none of them were the hot beefy blonde who practically drooled over you,” Sam says sarcastically. “Right.”

“Whatever,” Bucky laughs. “I didn’t know it was so obvious.”

“We just thought it would happen sooner,” Sam says, all kind eyes now.

“Stop getting sappy on me, Wilson,” Bucky says, feeling a blush coming on.

“Yeah, yeah.”

The only person in the house who is surprised to find out that Steve and Bucky are together is Peter. But he was kind of oblivious anyway.

\---

Bucky spends a long time in front of the mirror after he finally gets the phone call from Dr. Gupta that he can remove the sling. He’s nervous. His own body has been a trigger for him for a long time. The scars where he landed from the train blast reminding him of the throat-closing arid sands of Afghanistan. The muscle and weight that’s fluctuated so much this past year, the extra padding that reminds him of a time when someone like Steve could’ve snapped him in half. The line of pinpricks that form constellations at his flesh elbow, his upper thighs: the skin-memories of needles on needles on needles. And now the raised, gruesome evidence of his latest surgery, the metal arm erupting from the lumpy, angry red flesh. Silver fingers. Plates that shift and glide. These things that make him look, not like the small man he is, but like something only Mary Shelley could dream up.

It’s a lot. He stares, shirtless, basking in his own reflection, taking it all in. The first snow of the season has fallen, and the gentle, natural light coming in his window, curtains pulled wide, casts a soft light on his pale skin. He’s so focused on the valleys and hills of his torso that he doesn’t notice that Steve’s slipped into the room until he’s creeping up behind Bucky and wrapping his arms around Bucky’s middle, careful not to disturb the healing flesh. Steve closes his eyes for a second, just, happy. He’s incredibly warm against Bucky’s skin, who shivers pleasantly into the touch, not taking his eyes off their reflections. He’s got goosebumps.

“Hey, you,” Steve says, opening his eyes lazily and meeting Bucky’s gray ones in the mirror. They haven’t touched much since since Dr. Gupta tore him open. It was a damn shame, that they’d just discovered the exact ways to make each other writhe and arch, and they couldn’t put any their knowledge to good use. Bucky had to be careful. He felt like he was made of glass all over again. Sex would be too rough for his healing flesh. He feels like a bird, caught between Steve’s impressively strong hands.

“Steve,” Bucky responds, breathy, melting into Steve’s arms. Steve plants kisses on his good shoulder, moving from his bicep up toward his neck. Bucky leans back into him, lifting onto his tiptoes. Steve laughs into the crook of his neck – really just a huff of hot hair against Bucky’s skin – and folds his hands together over Bucky’s stomach, resting his chin on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky can tell in the smile lines around Steve’s eyes that he likes what he sees. They look, together, at their cuddling reflections, both shirtless and exposed in the little standing mirror that Bucky used to only see ghosts in.

It takes Bucky longer – a minute of scrutiny, a tilt of his head – to realize that he likes what he sees, too. Steve’s arms cover the bulk of his scars. The bionic arm is terrifying and cold and inhuman, but Steve traces it gently with his fingertips nonetheless. Sometimes he holds it. Bucky can feel heat start flooding his stomach; feel it pooling in Steve’s, too, his waist pressing into Bucky from behind.

 _No roughhousing_ , he hears in Dr. Gupta’s stern voice. Sigh.

“I hope you know how beautiful you are,” Steve says, giving him a squeeze. He starts to rock them back and forth from behind, real slow. The words come out funny as Bucky feels Steve’s jaw work against his shoulder.

“Can it, ya sap,” Bucky says, pushing his butt into Steve playfully. “You’re makin’ me soft, Rogers.”

“That’s funny, I thought I was making you hard,” Steve whispers cruelly into Bucky’s ear.

“Mmmmhhh,” is all Bucky manages. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, and then opens them miraculously to find that Steve is still there, holding him.

\---

He’s not sure what’s going to come next.

Halloween comes and goes, and Bucky hates every second of it. Hates passing out candy, hates being spooked, hates Scott and Wade’s new series of pranks that rattle his bones and make his heart jump out of his chest. He and Steve and the other _sane_ housemates have a bonfire in the backyard that night. Halloween is a big trigger for Luke Cage, so Bucky spends the later hours of the night hanging out in his room and distracting him from whatever keeps darkening the mood in his mind’s eye.

After the holiday, it comes down to routine. Bucky’s added back into the chore rotation. The washing machine’s still broken down, so he and Steve make Sunday night into laundromat dates. It’s retro and romantic and he loves it and Steve loves showing him off. They meet old ladies and grumpy men and twins and the owner’s cat, and they make it work.

The arm is incredible. He Skypes almost weekly with Tony and Dr. Gupta and sometimes Pepper, going over its functions, OS updates, trying new skills. He can use chopsticks with it now. He can sync up his hands and do things with them at the same time. This week, he’s learning how to type again. It gets better and steadier every day. Bucky catches himself folding his palms together, just looking at his hands together. Human and machine. Steve makes fun of him for staring at them so much, but Bucky can’t help it. He does get angry at Stark one night when he presses a button from all the way in _New York_ that makes his arm start playing Britney Spears. Just a little trick he’d thought he’d program in there, huh? Pepper laughs and laughs from the video chat screen, and Bucky wants to tear Stark’s head off.

He visits Clint, who only gets 60 days from the judge and is ready to start over, again. They have a big party when he comes home; Steve makes a whole meal and everyone plays pick-up football in the park despite the cold. Bucky’s grateful Clint’s home by Thanksgiving – he knows it’s his favorite holiday. They have fun signing at each other through the meal, Clint impressed with how quickly Bucky’s learned to sign with his metal arm. After, Bucky finally confides that his mother was deaf. That’s how he learned. Clint hugs him hard, uncharacteristic of him, and they all pass out on the couches from food comas.

His boss is excited to have him back on the line, and Bucky works twice as fast as before; he’s so strong now. He can lift cars up all by himself. Sure, he wears long sleeves around town and to work, not sure he’s ready for his co-workers and waitresses and fellow city dwellers to stare at his shiny new limb. But it feels good to work again after nearly two weeks off; the grind is familiar, the hoots and hollers and gossip of the other mechanics comforting even when he himself doesn’t partake. Work gives him purpose, a schedule, a paycheck to be proud of, a time to wake up in the morning. It lifts his spirits considerably after his week of kicking it at home.

Steve _loves_ his new arm. Like, adores it. Whenever he notices that Bucky is only making love with his right, flesh hand, Steve makes a point of pulling Bucky’s silver fingers to his lips and looking at Bucky sternly before placing the metal hand onto his chest, or his back, or against the bulge in his pants. _I want all of you_.

Someday, yeah, Bucky wants to move back to Brooklyn. Detroit is a liminal space for him; a place he respects, but his roots are deep in the East River, planted long before he even knew what that meant. Brooklyn is his home, period. He’s got a nephew on the way, now, and someday, he’ll ask Steve to go back with him. Maybe Sam can run the house; they both know he’d be great at it. Maybe everyone will be better, and they’ll sell the house and get in the habit of sending Christmas cards to everyone and having reunions every year. Perhaps they’ll open a halfway house in Brooklyn, the place where they both needed it. Perhaps, perhaps.

Most everyone in the house is thriving, too. Jessica hasn’t relapsed and visits every now and again. Clint’s been clean since jail, and the judge didn’t terminate his parental rights, and there is hope. Vision and Wanda _did_ get engaged, like they all predicted, and Loki shot their engagement photos. They’ll have a spring wedding in the backyard; Wanda’s been absorbed in the wedding planning and gone back to her usual snappy self. Peter’s ‘coming home from his study abroad’ and going back to live with his aunt after Christmas. Steve even bought him a suitcase from Goodwill and Photoshopped him into Berlin a few times. Sam, Wade, Thor, and Scott spend hours weaving stories for Peter to tell his aunt when she asks about his trip, though none of them are PG and he won't repeat any of them for Aunt May. When Peter leaves, his absence is felt throughout the house, but they couldn’t be happier for him.

And in that, Bucky realizes that he’s found himself a family. A fucked up menagerie of a family, but a family nonetheless. Scott. Luke. Wanda. Vision. Peter. Thor, Loki. Bruce. Clint. They heal his heart all the way over, and Steve keeps him warm at night, leaving enough heat to get him through their long days apart.

On New Year’s Eve, Luke Cage pops a bottle of sparkling cider and the ball drops and it’s a new dawn, and Steve kisses him, hard, into their future.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! I guess I have a couple of notes for ya:
> 
> 1\. This story was primarily inspired by my summer, between firsthand experiences with addiction and my time volunteering for the Public Defender of my county. I don't have a ton of personal experience otherwise with addiction and just want to be clear that this story may not be totally accurate, may be romanticized, and is fictitious. I appreciate your patience.
> 
> 2\. It can be a huge problem to 'condemn' narcotics/the supposed overprescription of narcotics, and it's important to acknowledge that many people do in fact need these drugs to treat chronic pain, post-op pain, etc. 
> 
> 3\. The stances and choices taken in this story are not necessarily my own, nor what I would recommend, and are sometimes just the reflection of the POV. This is 3rd person limited. These are Bucky's thoughts, not mine.
> 
> 4\. That said, I do hope you enjoy, and if there are serious issues taken with my writing, I am always looking to learn more/be better. Thanks friends, happy reading.


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